As experts and policy observers assess China's trajectory in 2026, a striking divergence emerges: strong confidence in China's technological capabilities, and deepening pessimism about its relations with both the United States and Europe on the other. This gap in expectations reveals two very different faces of China heading into 2026.
China's capacity to advance in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, and green technologies is widely acknowledged by respondents. Yet escalating US-China technology competition, Europe's struggle to operationalize de-risking, controversy over China's role in Russia's war in Ukraine, and China's deepening engagement with the Global South all point to an external environment unlikely to stabilize anytime soon.
These findings are drawn from MERICS' China Forecast 2026 annual survey, conducted between October and November 2025 among 766 China experts. The survey covers China's political and economic landscape, technological development, foreign policy strategy, and EU-China relations.
Among respondents who disclosed their nationality, roughly 80% were based in Europe, making this report a particularly revealing window into how the European think tank, academic, and policy communities perceive the tension between China's growing capabilities and its deteriorating external relationships.
Technology Expectations
Expert confidence in China's development is most concentrated in the technology domain. Looking at expectations for major or very major progress, artificial intelligence leads at 79%, well ahead of other fields. Digital connectivity, semiconductors, biotechnology, and green technologies all surpass 50%.
These figures suggest that despite US export controls on advanced chips and manufacturing equipment, respondents' assessment of China's capacity for technological advancement remains largely unshaken. AI is seen as the area most likely to achieve significant breakthroughs in 2026, and has become a key benchmark for gauging China's progress toward technological self-reliance.
