Buying a technological product is usually regarded as a private economic decision.
We compare specifications, prices, reviews, warranties and delivery times. We calculate whether the more expensive model is worth the difference. We look for discounts. Then we place the order and consider the matter closed.
But it is not closed at all.
When millions of European consumers systematically purchase technological products designed and manufactured outside Europe—particularly in China—the aggregate effect goes far beyond personal convenience. Each individual purchase may be negligible, but millions of such purchases influence supply chains, industrial capacity, employment, technological sovereignty and, ultimately, political power.
Buying technology is no longer merely an economic act.
It is a geopolitical act performed with a credit card.
Most people understandably do not think in these terms. A consumer is not a government minister, an industrial strategist or a military planner. Faced with two apparently comparable products, choosing the cheaper one seems entirely rational.
But what is rational for a single consumer can become strategically disastrous when repeated across an entire continent.
The invisible cost of convenience
The problem is not that Chinese products are necessarily inferior. In many sectors, the opposite is true: Chinese manufacturers have become highly competitive in price, quality, production scale, logistics and technological sophistication.
Nor is the problem that Europeans should reject everything Chinese merely because of its origin. That would be simplistic, economically unrealistic and intellectually dishonest. Europe is deeply integrated into global supply chains, and China is an essential industrial and commercial partner.
The problem is unmanaged dependence.
There is an enormous difference between trading with another country and allowing that country to become the dominant supplier of technologies on which everyday life, industrial production and national resilience depend.
A continent that loses the ability to design and manufacture strategic technologies does not merely lose factories. It loses expertise, bargaining power, autonomy and the practical ability to decide its own future.
The danger becomes particularly evident when we look at one of Europe’s most important industries: automotive manufacturing.
A modern car is not merely a car
For most of the twentieth century, an automobile could reasonably be understood as a mechanical product enhanced by electrical systems.
That definition is no longer adequate.
A modern vehicle is simultaneously a mechatronic platform, a network of computers, a software-defined product and a connected IoT device. It contains cameras, microphones, radar systems, positioning technology, connectivity modules, event recorders and numerous sensors monitoring the vehicle, its surroundings and sometimes its occupants. European regulations themselves require new vehicles to include increasingly sophisticated systems such as intelligent speed assistance, reversing detection, driver-attention warnings, event data recorders, lane-keeping support and automated braking.
The European Commission explicitly describes today’s vehicles as connected devices that increasingly exchange information with infrastructure, other vehicles and wider transport systems.
In other words, buying a car now means buying a computer system on wheels—and granting its manufacturer a lasting technological presence in one’s daily life.
This raises obvious questions.
What data does the vehicle collect?
Where is that data stored?
Which company processes it?
Which jurisdictions apply?
What can be changed through a remote software update?
Which functions depend on external servers?
Can the owner—or an independent European authority—meaningfully verify the answers?
These questions apply to every connected vehicle, regardless of the manufacturer’s nationality. European, American, Korean, Japanese and Chinese cars all deserve scrutiny. The issue is not ethnicity, cultural suspicion or an automatic presumption of malicious intent.
The issue is control.
With a conventional mechanical product, the main concern was whether it worked properly. With a connected technological platform, we must also ask who can observe it, update it, restrict it and potentially influence its operation after the sale.
What if the cars stopped?
Consider a hypothetical scenario.
Suppose a significant proportion of the vehicles circulating in a European country depended on software, cloud services, communication modules and update infrastructure controlled outside that country—and outside the European Union.
Now suppose that, during a severe diplomatic or geopolitical crisis, some of those functions became unavailable. Perhaps the cause would be a cyberattack, a software failure, interrupted connectivity, sanctions, a supplier dispute or a deliberate act.
The question is not whether a foreign manufacturer currently possesses a secret button labelled“Turn Europe off.” Such a claim would require evidence.
The correct question is whether we are creating the technical and economic conditions under which a foreign-controlled ecosystem could become a systemic point of failure.
Even if cars are not formally classified as critical infrastructure, mass mobility undoubtedly supports critical infrastructure. Hospital staff, technicians, emergency personnel, suppliers, factory workers and ordinary citizens must be able to move. Goods must reach shops. Components must reach production sites.
What would happen if a substantial part of a national vehicle fleet became simultaneously unusable, restricted or unable to access essential digital services?
The transport sector already faces recognised cybersecurity threats, including denial of service, unauthorised access, data theft and software manipulation. The possibility of disruption should therefore not be dismissed as science fiction merely because the underlying objects happen to have wheels.
A million connected cars are not simply a million consumer products.
Together, they are a distributed technological infrastructure.
Strategic risk does not require malicious intent
One of the weakest responses to these concerns is: “Why would China ever do that?”
This misses the point.
Sound strategic planning is not based exclusively on assumptions about another actor’s current intentions. It also considers capabilities, dependencies and possible future circumstances.
Countries that cooperate today may disagree tomorrow. Commercial relationships can be affected by sanctions, export restrictions, military conflicts, political retaliation or sudden regulatory changes. A remote service can become unavailable without anyone deliberately trying to sabotage its users.
Resilience means ensuring that essential systems continue to operate even when relationships deteriorate or supply chains break.
Europe should not demand technological sovereignty because every foreign company is hostile. Europe should demand it because sovereignty that depends on uninterrupted foreign goodwill is not sovereignty.
The same principle should apply to telecommunications equipment, cloud platforms, batteries, photovoltaic systems, drones, industrial machinery, surveillance technology, consumer electronics and the many invisible components embedded inside supposedly European products.
The destruction of an industrial ecosystem
The second danger is economic, but its consequences are also strategic.
The automotive industry is not simply a collection of famous brands. It is an ecosystem of manufacturers, component suppliers, specialised small and medium-sized companies, engineering firms, research centres, toolmakers, logistics providers and skilled workers.
When final assembly disappears, the damage does not stop at the factory gate.
Knowledge disappears with it.
Supplier networks weaken.
Engineering careers become less attractive.
Research investment moves elsewhere.
Production expertise is no longer transferred to the next generation.
Regions built around manufacturing enter decline.
The European Commission concluded in 2024 that China’s battery-electric vehicle value chain benefited from unfair subsidisation and that the resulting imports threatened economic injury to European producers. It subsequently introduced countervailing duties, with rates varying by manufacturer.
This is important because it confirms that the competitive environment is not merely the result of European inefficiency meeting superior foreign entrepreneurship. State support, industrial policy, access to capital, supply-chain concentration, energy costs and production scale all shape the contest.
Europe is not participating in a university economics exercise conducted under ideal conditions.
It is participating in an industrial power struggle.
The dramatic restructuring of Volkswagen is one particularly visible warning, although Chinese competition is not its only cause. European manufacturers are simultaneously dealing with high production costs, overcapacity, expensive technological transitions, weak demand in some markets and declining competitiveness in China itself. Recent reports have nevertheless connected Volkswagen’s proposed large-scale reductions directly to the pressure exerted by Chinese competitors and the company’s difficulties in the Chinese market.
It would therefore be inaccurate to say that every European automotive job lost is the direct consequence of a European citizen buying a Chinese car.
But it would be equally absurd to claim that purchasing decisions have no collective industrial consequence.
“I don’t work in the automotive industry”
Many consumers will answer: “This does not concern me. I do not work in the car industry.”
It does concern them.
An industrial ecosystem supports far more than its direct employees. It generates tax revenue, exports, apprenticeships, research, infrastructure and demand for services. Its workers buy houses, visit restaurants, employ tradespeople and sustain local economies.
When a major industrial sector contracts, the effects propagate.
The software engineer working in another industry may discover that public finances have weakened. The shop owner may lose customers. The graduate may find fewer high-value technical careers. The taxpayer may eventually finance unemployment support, industrial rescue plans or the regeneration of declining regions.
The consequences do not respect sector boundaries.
By choosing the cheapest available product, consumers may save several thousand euros today while collectively contributing to an economic transformation that will cost them much more tomorrow.
This does not make the consumer morally guilty. People respond to the incentives and choices placed before them. If European industry offers an inferior product at a substantially higher price, it cannot reasonably demand loyalty as compensation for its failures.
But consumers should at least recognise the full meaning of the transaction.
The price on the windscreen is not the entire cost.
When public money finances strategic dependence
In Italy, the contradiction has at times become almost satirical.
Public incentives intended to accelerate the transition towards electric and lower-emission mobility have been granted according to the vehicle’s price, emissions category and other eligibility conditions—not necessarily according to where the vehicle was designed, where its strategic components originated or how much European value it contained. Italy’s incentive programmes have offered substantial contributions for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, with the largest amounts linked to income and the scrapping of older cars.
As a result, public money collected from Italian taxpayers could support the purchase of imported vehicles—including Chinese ones—and thereby help foreign manufacturers penetrate the European market.
The environmental objective was legitimate. Reducing emissions and replacing older vehicles are reasonable public-policy goals.
But environmental policy detached from industrial policy can produce a perverse result: Europe subsidises the demand while another country captures the production, technology, employment and strategic advantage.
We socialise the cost of the transition and outsource much of its industrial value.
Then, when European factories reduce production, we express surprise.
This is not an argument for protectionism without conditions
Europe cannot solve this problem by surrounding itself with tariffs and continuing to manufacture expensive, uncompetitive products. Protection without reform would merely force European citizens to finance industrial complacency.
European manufacturers must accept their share of responsibility.
They underestimated the transformation of the market.
They often produced electric vehicles that were too expensive.
They allowed software competence to lag behind mechanical competence.
They developed confusing product strategies.
They sometimes appeared more interested in protecting margins than producing accessible technology.
Strategic autonomy must not become an excuse for mediocrity.
However, neither should “consumer choice” become an excuse for strategic suicide.
Europe needs a serious combination of measures: investment in local production, traceable supply chains, enforceable cybersecurity requirements, transparent rules for vehicle data, European control over critical digital functions, reciprocal market access and public incentives tied to meaningful European value creation.
A vehicle sold in Europe should not merely comply with crash tests and emission limits. Its software architecture, remote-management capabilities, update mechanisms and data flows should also be independently auditable.
And if a product benefits from public incentives, the public should receive more than lower emissions in return. It should also receive resilience, technological capability and long-term economic value.
Every purchase casts a vote
No individual consumer can redesign European industrial policy from a dealership.
Governments bear the greatest responsibility. European institutions must identify strategic dependencies before they become irreversible. Manufacturers must produce credible alternatives. Regulators must make invisible risks visible.
But consumers are not irrelevant.
Every purchase helps determine which companies grow, where the next factory is built, which technical standards become dominant and which industrial capabilities survive.
This does not mean that buying one Chinese smartphone, drone or automobile is an act of betrayal. Moralistic accusations would oversimplify a systemic problem and unfairly transfer responsibility from institutions to individuals.
It means that millions of purchases have political consequences even when none of the buyers intended to make a political statement.
We have been trained to regard ourselves as consumers rather than citizens. Consumers ask only: What is the best deal for me today?
Citizens must ask one more question:
What kind of country—and what kind of Europe—does this purchase help create tomorrow?
Cheap technology can carry an expensive dependency.
Convenience can conceal vulnerability.
And the shopping cart, however innocent it may appear, has become one of the places where the geopolitical future of Europe is being decided.
