Spain's deepening ties with China carry strategic risks

Global Watch | 2026-04-24

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has returned from his fourth visit to Beijing in roughly four years, bringing back a new set of cooperation documents signed in the presence of President Xi Jinping.

Madrid presented the trip as a pragmatic effort to expand market access and narrow its trade imbalance with China. But in Brussels, the broader policy debate has shifted: engagement is no longer judged only by export wins, but by whether it deepens strategic exposure in already sensitive supply chains.

The economic backdrop is stark. Reuters reported that Spain's trade deficit with China rose to nearly $50 billion in 2025, with Sánchez saying China accounted for about 74 percent of Spain's overall trade gap.

That helps explain why Madrid is pursuing incremental openings in agriculture, infrastructure and technology. It also explains why those gains are being scrutinized more closely inside the EU, where the European Commission describes the bloc's economic relationship with China as "critically unbalanced" because of "a significant asymmetry" in market access.

Promises of reciprocity

The leaders oversaw protocols designed to produce quick, visible results. China agreed to expanded access for Spanish exports including pork and cherries, while both sides advanced cooperation in science, education, film, transport and infrastructure.

They also pledged to support the further development of the China-Europe Railway Express and green shipping corridors. On paper, that looks reciprocal. In practice, the structure remains lopsided: Spain continues to import far more Chinese manufactured goods, electronics and machinery than it exports in return.

That imbalance is what gives the visit wider significance.

Selective openings for niche exports can generate goodwill and domestic political value, but they do not materially alter the underlying asymmetry in trade.

At the same time, logistics and infrastructure cooperation can deepen operational dependence over time as Beijing uses trade and infrastructure simultaneously to expand its influence.

The European Parliament's work on economic security warns explicitly about hostile actors "weaponizing interdependencies," while the European Commission's 2025 economic security factsheet identifies the "weaponization of dependencies" as a live threat to the bloc.

That does not mean every bilateral agreement becomes a strategic liability. It does mean the burden of proof has changed.

The question is no longer whether a deal produces commercial activity today, but whether repeated sector-by-sector arrangements leave Europe more exposed tomorrow.

MERICS has warned that European countries remain uneven in how they measure and reduce China-related vulnerabilities, leaving the continent "overall more exposed" even as de-risking has become official policy language.

Alignment at a price

The diplomatic framing of the trip underscored that wider tension. Xi called on both countries to oppose "the law of the jungle" and defend multilateralism.

Sánchez, for his part, cast Spain as a constructive interlocutor between China and Europe and urged Beijing to play a larger role in international crises.

That language is politically useful to both sides: for Madrid, it preserves room for commercial engagement; for Beijing, it reinforces the idea that important EU capitals still prefer dialogue over confrontation.

Spain insists the relationship remains pragmatic and mutually beneficial, and there is a case for keeping channels open with the world's second-largest economy. But Europe's own policy institutions are now much less willing to treat commercial ties as strategically neutral.

The Commission's language about asymmetry, and the EU's growing focus on resilience, reflect a harder lesson learned across the bloc: dependence can accumulate quietly, long before it is tested politically and exposes vulnerabilities in the long run.

That is the real significance of Sánchez's latest Beijing visit. Spain may well secure modest export gains and short-term diplomatic dividends.

What it is less likely to secure is a meaningful correction in the structural imbalance that defines the relationship. And unless those agreements are matched by a clearer resilience strategy, Madrid risks strengthening ties in ways that are commercially useful in the near term but strategically constraining over time.