A new index measuring countries’ exposure to Chinese power ranks Germany third and the United States fourth globally in 2025, behind only South Korea and Russia. France ranks sixth and the United Kingdom seventh.
The China Exposure Index, or CEI, covers 184 countries studied from 2013 through 2025.
The index does not measure whether Beijing has successfully changed another government’s policies. It defines power as China’s “latent capacity to influence”—the potential ability to influence another country—and measures how exposed countries are to that power.
The CEI distinguishes power from influence, which requires the successful use of that power to change real-world policies or preferences, and from alignment, in which countries already share similar preferences with Beijing.
Developed by George Yin, a senior research fellow at National Taiwan University’s Center for China Studies, a nonresident fellow at the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute, and a senior associate fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, the index draws on measures including trade, foreign direct investment, development finance, military reach, arms transfers, diplomatic relations, visa arrangements, and Confucius Institutes.
Confucius Institutes are Chinese state-backed language and cultural programs established in cooperation with foreign universities and other institutions. Their presence is one of the indicators the CEI uses to measure Beijing’s potential capacity to influence other countries.
Related Stories
The Europe edition was published Sept. 23 by GPPi, MERICS, and National Taiwan University.
US Remains Near Top
The CEI says U.S. exposure declined during President Donald Trump’s first term and continued to fall under President Joe Biden. The index then rose again toward the end of Biden’s term before declining in 2025, when the United States ranked fourth globally.
The Europe edition does not provide detailed U.S. indicator data showing what drove those changes. The Epoch Times has requested the underlying U.S. data and component breakdown from GPPi but had not received a response by publication time.
Germany Ranks 3rd
The report says countries at the top of the European rankings reach their positions through different combinations of economic and other ties with China. Its statistical model gives particularly strong importance to Chinese foreign direct investment and Confucius Institutes, while trade is also part of the measure.
Germany has 19 Confucius Institutes, according to the CEI, up from 15 in 2013.
Trade is only one component of the broader index. Separately, official figures illustrate the scale of Germany’s commercial relationship with China.
China returned as Germany’s largest goods trading partner in 2025, with 251.8 billion euros ($286.6 billion) in combined imports and exports, according to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office Destatis. China held the top position from 2016 through 2023 before the United States moved ahead in 2024.
Germany imported 170.6 billion euros ($194.1 billion) in goods from China in 2025, up 8.8 percent from the previous year. German exports to China fell 9.7 percent to 81.3 billion euros ($92.5 billion), according to Destatis.
Europe Remains Above 2013 Exposure
Europe’s exposure to Chinese power increased from 2013 through 2020 before declining, according to the CEI.
The report places that shift alongside the European Union’s designation of China as a “systemic rival” in 2019, disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about strategic dependence following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Brussels’ subsequent adoption of a “de-risking” approach—efforts to reduce strategic dependence on China without fully separating the two economies.
The retreat has been modest, the CEI says, and Europe remains significantly more exposed than it was in 2013.
The European Union imported 559.4 billion euros ($636.7 billion) in goods from China in 2025, up 6.4 percent from the previous year, while exports to China fell 6.5 percent to 199.6 billion euros ($227.2 billion), according to Eurostat. That left a goods trade deficit of 359.8 billion euros ($409.5 billion).
Ireland’s Exposure Climbs
Ireland recorded one of the three sharpest increases in exposure in Europe between 2013 and 2025, rising from 107th to 58th globally (and 38th to 21st in Europe), according to the CEI.
The report gives Ireland particular attention because it is a European technology hub “home to a dense concentration of American firms.”
Chinese foreign direct investment in Ireland was statistically negligible in 2013 but reached 4.6 percent of Irish gross domestic product in 2020. It stood at 2.7 percent in 2025, or about $19.4 billion, according to the CEI.
The report says Chinese technology and pharmaceutical companies have used Ireland as a base for entering the European Union market. It cites WuXi Biologics’ 325 million-euro ($370 million) plant in Dundalk—its first outside China—and TikTok’s first European data center in Dublin.
Spain Remains Highly Exposed
Spain ranks 12th globally and fifth in Europe in the 2025 CEI, roughly the same global position it held at the beginning of the index in 2013.
Its overall ranking has remained relatively stable, but several underlying measures have increased substantially.
Spain’s imports from China have nearly doubled since 2013, while Chinese foreign direct investment rose roughly ninefold, from about $800 million to $7.3 billion, according to the report.
The number of Confucius Institutes in Spain also increased from six in 2013 to 10 in 2025, the CEI says.
The United States has moved sharply in the opposite direction. The number of Confucius Institutes at U.S. colleges and universities fell from about 100 in 2019 to fewer than five by 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office. Congress restricted federal funding to schools hosting the institutes in 2018, and schools surveyed by GAO most commonly cited the potential loss of federal funding and outside pressure as factors in closing them.
