The US and Israel may have started the war in Iran, but – apart from the belligerents themselves – it is China and Europe that stand to lose the most from it. Yet while European leaders watch like rabbits caught in the headlights as energy prices shoot through the roof, China has responded to the crisis with remarkable equanimity. It is striking how self-confident Beijing is ahead of this week’s Trump-Xi summit.

That’s because China is better prepared for what I call an age of “un-order”. This is not the same as disorder, where rules exist but are broken. Un-order is a world where the rules themselves have simply ceased to matter. While European governments have been obsessed with preserving order, China has been working out how to survive chaos.

China saw this moment coming a decade and a half ago as Europeans outsourced their security to Nato, their trade rules to the World Trade Organisation, and their energy supplies to Russia and the Gulf. At the same time, Beijing was quietly stockpiling oil, food and semiconductors on a massive scale, cornering the global market in rare earths, critical minerals and the technologies of the future.

All sides are now mesmerised by the theatricality of Trump’s US, but an even bigger long-term risk is that China manages to eat Europe’s lunch, weaken its defences, deindustrialise its cities and open it up to coercion and blackmail. The scale of Europe’s exposure to Chinese dominance is staggering – and China’s industrial over-capacity and predatory exchange rates make Europe’s open markets the main target for Chinese........

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