Algemeen·NRC·18 sep

Why Europe’s populists forget to bash China

Imagine trying to craft the perfect bogeyman to haunt the European imagination. This dreamt-up foe would be a very large country, perhaps adhering to the same communist ideology that for decades shackled Eastern Europe. Such an imaginary nemesis would have harnessed the heft of its state-planned economy to export the exact same products that once enriched Europe, such as cars—yet make them better and cheaper. To be a convincing geopolitical menace this antagonist would have supported Russia as it assailed Ukraine, and could thus be held indirectly responsible for the security crisis that afflicts the continent. To top it all off, it might be blamed for having spawned, in still-unclear circumstances, a virus that just a few years ago kept Europeans indoors for months on end.