EU faces 300,000 factory job cuts as China 'colonises' supply chains

Across the industrial heartlands of Europe, a slow unraveling is underway — not born of crisis or collapse, but of structural displacement. Chinese manufacturers, guided by long-horizon state planning, have embedded themselves into European supply chains at the component level, eroding the economic foundations that once sustained hundreds of thousands of livelihoods. As negotiators in Brussels race toward an October deadline, the deeper question is whether the instruments of trade diplomacy can move faster than the mathematics of competitive advantage.