Navigating Sino–European trade headwinds

Learning the lay of the land

And as successive waves of Chinese companies go global, professional services could offer another avenue for cooperation, experts said.

Regulatory environments in Europe can be far more multilayered and complex, spanning taxation, employment, data protection, environmental standards, competition law, and corporate responsibility, before companies even turn to marketing and branding.

Miguel Otero-Iglesias, a professor of the practice of international political economy at Spain's IE University and a senior analyst at Elcano Royal Institute, said: "It is a whole different political, social, legal, and media environment. You seek out local partners because you are out of your depth … This is a revolution that a lot of multinational corporations have experienced before. The Americans did it before, the Japanese did it before."

Businesses may naturally want domestic professional-services companies to follow them, and China is seeking to build its own "China Services" brands. But on-the-ground expertise is only part of the equation, Wang said, as European regulators are often more accustomed to working with local advisers, making such interactions more familiar and smoother.

What also sets Europe's professional-services sector apart is a track record built over decades of helping its companies at home build an international presence, Zhou said.

"They have learned which pitfalls to avoid, with those lessons embedded in their institutional knowledge. That accumulated expertise is extremely valuable to Chinese companies."

Meeting rising demand

The demand for higher-quality services from Europe is not confined to factories and businesses.

As incomes rise, people naturally begin to spend more on services, Wang said. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, the growth rate of service retail sales at 5.3 percent outpaced that of goods retail by 4.2 percentage points in the first half of 2026.

China has pledged to lift household spending through higher wages and improved social welfare, while expanding services consumption in areas including elderly care, childcare, healthcare, culture, tourism, sports, and education. The policies were outlined in the country's first dedicated five-year plan to boost consumption, which was approved by the State Council, China's Cabinet, in July.

The blueprint said China will also ease market access restrictions and further open up service sectors, including telecommunications, the internet, education, culture, and healthcare.

Sports offers a particularly vivid example of how Europe's mature ecosystem of services built around marquee events can fuel Chinese consumers' growing pursuit of elevated lifestyle experiences, as well as unlock further consumption, said Sharon Adesola David, a consultant at Shanghai-based S&M Agency, which specializes in helping international brands navigate the Chinese market.

"Many of the world's most commercially successful sports properties, particularly in football, have been developed in Europe," she said. "Competitions such as the Premier League, La Liga and UEFA tournaments have built sophisticated models around fan engagement, broadcasting rights, sponsorship, youth development and international expansion."

As grassroots leagues boom across China, a European league could work with a Chinese competition to build a membership program, train its fan-engagement team and develop activities that keep supporters involved long after the final whistle. European clubs could also license academy models to Chinese partners and export coaching curricula, scouting methods, management expertise, and more.

"As China continues to develop its sports economy, collaboration with European organizations can also help transform sport from a series of major events into a sustainable industry," she said. "While goods trade can sometimes face challenges around tariffs, supply chains and industrial competition, services are often built around collaboration, expertise and shared value creation … The opportunity is not one side exporting to the other, but both sides contributing to a shared global ecosystem."