政府新闻
实用主义棱镜：上海作为欧澳之间的桥梁 2026-01-21
As strategic alignments evolve in the Asia-Pacific, a metropolis like Shanghai seems emerging as a pragmatic hub for EU-Australia-China cooperation in trade, education and green industry. Amid rising tensions, the city's modernity and openness offer rare common ground.
The Asia-Pacific is changing. In Australia, voices within the political and academic establishment are beginning to ask whether exclusive reliance on the United States through mechanisms like Aukus truly serves the country's long-term interests. While strategic deterrence remains central, the risks of entanglement and economic decoupling are being weighed more carefully.
In parallel, the European Union is increasingly determined to carve out its own role in the region – balancing partnerships with like-minded democracies, yet still deeply uncertain about what posture to adopt toward China. While EU institutions seem more inclined to emphasize strategic competition, many individual European countries continue to favor engagement and dialogue.
Against this backdrop, the idea of exploring new formats of cooperation – including trilateral, flexible and city-driven ones – is gaining traction. And here, Shanghai presents itself not as a geopolitical actor, but as a practical interface. Its international openness, technological infrastructure and longstanding connections with both European and Asia-Pacific partners position it as a space where trust can be rebuilt and innovation pursued – without directly triggering national sensitivities.
Strategic realignments and the search for new anchors
The bloc logic underpinning Aukus contrasts sharply with the increasingly multipolar reality of the Asia-Pacific. The EU's Indo-Pacific strategy, formalized in 2021, explicitly emphasizes multilateralism, openness and sustainability. For Europe, strategic autonomy means resisting binary choices and investing in regional architectures that reduce dependencies – especially in supply chains and digital ecosystems.
Australia faces a different, but equally complex, challenge: How to reconcile its security alignment with Washington with its deep economic interdependence with China, and how to engage in Asia-Pacific multilateralism without alienating key partners.
In this evolving chessboard, metropolitan areas like Shanghai – agile, globally connected, and relatively insulated from hard security postures – offer something different: access to markets, platforms for industrial collaboration, and education ecosystems that are less exposed to classic zero-sum geopolitical dynamics.
Shanghai's "quiet leverage"
Shanghai already maintains strong institutional and informal ties with both Europe and Australia. With Europe, the city has nurtured decades of city-to-city partnerships, corporate co-investments, and academic exchange programs. With Australia, it has served as a hub for student mobility, port logistics partnerships (e.g., with Melbourne), and cultural diplomacy.
Importantly, Shanghai also hosts consulates, business councils, chambers of commerce, and joint innovation labs that facilitate low-profile engagement – even when national-level relations are frozen. Its annual hosting of the China International Import Expo (CIIE) has allowed stakeholders from Australia and the EU to showcase strengths – from agrifood to clean tech – without falling into politicized traps.
If Europe and Australia seek to diversify their industrial bases, foster green technologies, and cooperate on urban sustainability, Shanghai could act as a vital interface – not as a political capital, but as a pragmatic connector.
Education, climate, industry: a promising trilateral agenda
Rather than grand geopolitical declarations, the most promising space for a renewed EU-Australia-China dynamic lies in issue-specific cooperation.
Higher education is a natural starting point. Universities in Australia and Europe have long collaborated with Chinese institutions – many based in Shanghai. These partnerships have weathered cycles of geopolitical tension because they are rooted in scientific value, co-publication and mutual talent development. With appropriate safeguards and clearer rules on research integrity, they could evolve into multilateral academic clusters that support both resilience and innovation.
Climate cooperation is another key opportunity. Australia's green transition is accelerating, with rising investment in hydrogen, carbon markets and circular economy models – areas where the EU leads in regulation and Shanghai is testing urban pilot projects. Trilateral working groups or consortia could scale up cooperation on port sustainability, green finance, or smart cities – leveraging existing academic ties for new joint projects.
On the industrial front, both Europe and Australia are working to secure access to critical minerals and to decarbonize their value chains. Joint ventures in battery technology, low-carbon steel, or digital manufacturing – prototyped or supported in Shanghai – could provide tangible alternatives to national-only strategies. The involvement of Shanghai-based accelerators, research hubs, and investors would add technical capacity without undermining political oversight.
Generally speaking, the medium-term goal is not to replace national diplomacy, but to create new, issue-specific channels for pragmatic problem-solving. At a time when both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy are under strain – paralyzed by fear, mistrust, and fragmentation – it is more urgent than ever to test creative approaches to international cooperation.
Three converging trends suggest this is the right time to act differently.
First, the EU's growing discomfort with over-dependence on the US – especially amid fears of a second Donald Trump presidency – pushes Brussels to expand its Asia-Pacific footprint. Military alliances like Aukus may not appeal, but flexible trilateralism rooted in common interests could.
Second, Australia is slowly rediscovering the value of engaging China beyond the security lens. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's visits to Beijing in 2023 and 2025, as well as the normalization of bilateral trade flows, suggest a willingness to reframe the relationship. Investing in neutral spaces like Shanghai could signal strategic maturity, not weakness.
Third, China itself is adjusting to a post-COVID, post-tech-boom era. Cities like Shanghai are being tasked with stepping up their international outreach – especially in economics, education, and environmental cooperation. The city has both the mandate and the ambition to engage, if others are willing to meet it halfway.
A case for smart engagement
The fact that no city has yet emerged as a confidence-building actor in the Asia-Pacific or elsewhere does not mean it cannot happen. On the contrary – it invites us to ask whether innovation in diplomacy might now come from the local level.
In a world increasingly shaped by bifurcation and distrust, the temptation to disengage is strong. But withdrawal does not equate to resilience. Europe and Australia have an opportunity to test new formats of engagement with China that go beyond national-level summits and beyond confrontation.
By anchoring these efforts in a city like Shanghai – modern, efficient and already networked – they can pursue cooperation that is both realistic and normatively defensible. Trade missions, green finance forums, academic clusters, urban development labs: These are not utopian fantasies, but feasible next steps. What matters is to be clear-eyed, not naïve; committed, not dependent; and open, without being exposed.
The Asia-Pacific is not just about carriers and submarines. It is also about trade corridors, university ecosystems, low-carbon supply chains, and cities that shape how 70 percent of the world's population lives. In this evolving geography, Shanghai might not be a power center – but it can be a connector.
If Europe wants to assert its strategic autonomy, and Australia wishes to avoid binary choices, both should consider what Shanghai already offers: a dense, open, and modern platform where pragmatic cooperation is still possible – even in uncertain times.
It won't solve the Asia-Pacific puzzle – but it might help redraw the map.
(The author Gloria Sand is a Paris-based independent researcher. The views are her own.)
Source: City News Service
