For years, Europe’s industrial decline has been blamed on high energy prices, burdensome regulation and the cost of decarbonisation.
Now, one of Britain’s biggest industrialists argues there is a second, more strategic threat gathering pace: China.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has issued one of his starkest warnings yet, accusing Beijing of deliberately flooding European markets with cut-price chemicals in a strategy that is closing factories, destroying competitiveness and eroding an industry he says is fundamental to national security.
His message to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is unusually blunt.
Europe, he argues, cannot afford to move at a “snail’s pace” while almost 200 chemical plants have closed across the continent in just five years.
Behind the statistics lies a much larger question: what happens when an industrial superpower willingly gives up the ability to manufacture products essential to its own economy?
Chemicals are rarely politically glamorous. They do not attract the attention given to artificial intelligence, semiconductors or electric vehicles.
Yet they underpin almost everything.
Hospitals depend on them. Agriculture depends on them. Pharmaceuticals, defence manufacturing, plastics, fertilisers, water treatment and advanced manufacturing all begin with a chemical supply chain.
Lose that capability and entire industries become dependent on overseas suppliers.
That is precisely the vulnerability Ratcliffe says Europe is creating.
His accusation is that China is not simply competing harder — it is building production capacity far beyond domestic demand before exporting the excess into Europe at prices domestic manufacturers cannot realistically match.
Whether characterised as dumping or simply aggressive industrial policy, the effect is difficult to ignore.
European producers face some of the world’s highest energy costs while simultaneously paying carbon charges and complying with increasingly stringent environmental regulations.
Chinese manufacturers often operate under a very different economic model, supported by state-backed finance, lower energy costs and industrial policies designed to maximise global market share rather than short-term profitability.
The result is an increasingly uneven playing field.
Ratcliffe’s warning also exposes an uncomfortable contradiction within European industrial policy.
Brussels has repeatedly spoken about “strategic autonomy” since the Covid pandemic exposed fragile global supply chains.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforced that message, highlighting the dangers of dependence on geopolitical rivals for critical materials and energy.
Yet critics argue the EU has been far slower in protecting industrial production than in articulating its ambitions.
Ratcliffe points to Project ONE — a £4 billion petrochemicals complex in Antwerp — as an example.
The facility promises substantial reductions in emissions while modernising European production capacity.
Yet despite its strategic significance, he says the project has received no EU financial support.
At the same time, governments elsewhere have become increasingly interventionist.
The United States has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into domestic manufacturing through legislation designed to attract investment.
China continues to back strategic industries through large-scale state support and industrial planning.
Europe, by comparison, is often criticised for relying on regulation while offering comparatively limited incentives for heavy industry.
This debate extends well beyond chemicals.
Steel, automotive manufacturing, battery production and refining have all experienced growing competitive pressure from overseas producers benefiting from lower costs and more direct government backing.
The UK’s Chemical Industries Association has voiced similar concerns, warning that Chinese overcapacity continues to distort both British and European markets.
The organisation stresses it supports free trade—but only when competition is genuinely fair.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Industrial policy is no longer simply about economics.
It is increasingly about resilience.
Recent crises—from Covid to Ukraine—have demonstrated how quickly global supply chains can become geopolitical leverage.
Europe has spent years reducing dependence on Russian energy.
The question now is whether it is quietly replacing one strategic dependency with another.
Ratcliffe’s intervention is therefore about more than protecting corporate profits.
It is a warning that industrial capacity, once lost, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.
Factories can close within months.
Recreating skilled workforces, supply chains and investment confidence can take decades.
Whether Brussels responds remains uncertain.
But if Europe’s chemical industry continues to shrink while China’s continues to expand, the consequences are likely to be felt far beyond the factory gate.
They will shape the continent’s economic resilience, strategic autonomy and ability to compete in an increasingly fragmented global economy.
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