Riccardo Nanni and Francesca Musiani, “Analyser la souveraineté numérique au sein de l’Union européenne : une économie politique des interdictions de Huawei”, Hérodote n° 199, 2025, p. 139-156
This article observes EU countries’ quest for digital sovereignty vis-à-vis China in light of Chinese investments in the EU from 2009 to 2021. It relies on two open datasets: i) the “Mapping China’s Tech Giants” datasets released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and ii) the dataset on Chinese foreign direct investments (FDIs) in Europe by Babic and Linsi (2024). By observing Chinese investments in the EU from the wake of the last financial crisis up to the first year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, this article finds that those countries who raised most barriers against Chinese technologies in the name of digital sovereignty and cybersecurity are also those who received most Chinese technological investments and FDIs in general. Conversely, countries with a stronger pro-China stance feature fewer Chinese investments. On this ground, this article argues that digital sovereignty stances in the EU are aimed at rebalancing relations of economic dependence, while EU countries with lower FDI attractiveness seek Chinese investments to differentiate investors and avoid overreliance on investment flows from a small group of countries.