Is Europe declining faster than Qing China? A Chinese-French debate

South China Morning Post

South China Morning Post

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June 16, 2026

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lean left
Is Europe declining faster than Qing China? A Chinese-French debate

Is the economic decline of Europe worse than the last decades of the Qing dynasty? That’s a question posed by Luis Vassy, director of Sciences Po, one of France’s premier universities. It has caused something of a stir in Europe and China. “The European Union has seen its share of the world economy fall from 30 per cent to 17 per cent between 2008 and 2025, a span of 17 years,” he wrote in Le Grand Continent, a European current affairs publication, last week. “China covered the same distance...

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