Click to expand Image Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, during a College of Commissioners meeting in Brussels, Belgium, December 3, 2025. © 2025 Simon Wohlfahrt/Bloomberg via Getty Images As European Union commissioners prepare for their April 29 security college meeting on China’s influence on EU security, they should place human rights concerns at the center of those discussions. The Chinese government’s intensifying repression at home and increasingly coercive conduct abroad pose serious risks not only for people’s rights, but also for Europe’s long-term security and economic resilience.Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, the Chinese government has dramatically tightened ideological control, crushed independent civil society, and subjected ethnic and religious minorities to mass abuses including state-imposed forced labor. Beijing has also expanded transnational repression, adopted abusive laws with extraterritorial reach, and exported surveillance technologies: extending privacy, expression, and other rights violations beyond its borders.China’s support of Russia’s war against Ukraine underscores the security consequences of ignoring rights abuses. Human Rights Watch reported in June 2025 that Chinese‑made commercial drones were being used by Russian forces to deliberately target civilians, highlighting how China’s industrial and technological production can fuel grave violations abroad. Human rights are also integral to Europe’s economic security. China’s “low‑rights” political economy—including a ban on independent unions, a discriminatory household registration system that limits access to public services for a third of its workforce, local governments’ forcible seizure of rural land, and greenlighting massive infrastructure projects without public consultation or effective legal constraints—have all fed into decades of artificially cheap exports. These practices have driven a global race to the bottom in labor rights and contributed to localized job losses in Europe.The EU has begun to act—including through its forced labor regulation and corporate sustainability due diligence rules—but these watered-down measures are insufficient. EU institutions should go further by embedding human rights into economic policies and foreign policy, pressing China to fulfill its international labor commitments and expanding targeted sanctions against Chinese officials and companies responsible for serious abuses.The EU’s fragmented approach has failed to counter China’s abusive practices. Only a coordinated EU strategy that integrates human rights across its foreign and economic policies can reduce Europe’s vulnerability to Beijing’s retaliation and wider security threats.