Links about China and EU-China relations that caught my eye this week

1) Top analysis from (fellow Ulsterman) Finbarr Bermingham, Yanmei Xie and Jason Marcel on the state of play after the Šefčovič deal and EU summit.

https://open.substack.com/pub/sinification/p/eu-china-debrief-with-yanmei-xie

2) Alan Beattie is sceptical in the FT: “The meeting of EU member states last Thursday and Friday made the requisite scary noises towards China over trade, roughly the equivalent of putting a sheet over their heads and going “woo-ooo” on Halloween.”

https://www.ft.com/content/7dbe983c-fcd2-41dd-bbe4-9f38a489e6c2

3) Don’t forget about Central Asia: Vusal Guliyev reports on intensified logistics coordination between China, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

https://cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/13999-azerbaijan-kazakhstan-and-china-coordinate-logistics-along-the-middle-corridor.html

4) Meanwhile in China itself, the Economist has a somewhat hair-raising preview of the Fifth Plenum meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee next week.

https://www.economist.com/china/2026/10/22/chinas-party-elite-gathers-with-purges-and-promotions-in-mind

5) It came from outer space: Chinese rocket debris falling in Indonesia and Minnesota. (Of course, this happens regularly to all space programs.)

https://www.leonarddavid.com/china-rocket-debris-two-cases-of-landfall