Beijing’s First Polish Restrictions and Why Poland Will Not Change Its Approach to China

In July 2026, China placed Wrocław University of Science and Technology and Vigo Photonics on its export control list – the first time Beijing has aimed such restrictions at Polish entities. The move was retaliation for the EU’s 21st sanctions package against Russia rather than a bilateral measure, and it is unlikely to change much. Warsaw had settled the direction of its China policy well before Beijing began naming Polish entities.

Poland is one of the clearest cases of security-first pragmatism toward China in Central Europe. Since 2022, the relationship has been filtered through Russia’s war in Ukraine, the China-Russia partnership, and a growing emphasis on security. Trade with China keeps growing, and Warsaw has no intention of cutting it, but pure economic logic no longer sets the political tone.

Trade Deepens, but Trust Does Not

The numbers explain why Poland has more at stake than most of its regional neighbors. In 2024, the country ran a trade deficit with China of roughly €31 billion. In 2025, China’s share of Polish imports climbed from 14.5 to 15.5 percent, with the value of Chinese goods growing more than 13 percent year-on-year. The trend has continued into 2026, though more slowly. Imports from China rose 8.2 percent over the first five months of the year, and combined imports from China and Vietnam over the past twelve months reached €67 billion, close to the €71.4 billion imported from Germany – Poland’s traditionally largest trading partner. The National Bank of Poland has also flagged competitive pressure from China as a source of disinflation in consumer goods.

Exposure on that scale would normally buy political influence. In Poland, it has not, and the reason is that the country’s China debate now sits predominantly within a broader security assessment in which Russia is the primary threat and China figures as part of the same problem, rather than as a separate commercial file to be managed on its own merits. 

Security Sets the Terms

The developments of September 2025 made this point clear. At the time, Poland temporarily closed its border with Belaruswithout visible hesitation, cutting a route carrying around 90 percent of China-EU rail freight, an estimated €25 billion a year. February 2026 brought a smaller version of a similar reflex, when the government banned Chinese vehicles from military facilities and barred personnel from connecting their phones to those cars’ systems.

The institutional architecture points the same way. Poland spends 4.8 percent of GDP on defense, the highest share in NATO. Warsaw has tightened screening of Chinese investment and its rules on high-risk 5G suppliers, and the updated cybersecurity act known as Lex Huawei is now in force, despite the Chinese company publicly challenging it as discriminatory at the draft stage.

Taiwan Moves In

Where Beijing loses ground in Poland, Taipei gains it. In 2025, Poland took around 60 percent of Taiwan’s drone exports, making it the world’s largest buyer of Taiwanese drones at the time. Defense-industrial ties were further formalized at the International Defence Industry Exhibition in Kielce in September 2025, where Taipei, Warsaw, and Kyiv signed a trilateral drone agreement. An important symbol of this cooperation came a month later, when a senior Taiwanese general appeared in full uniform at the Warsaw Security Forum.

Industry has meanwhile followed suit. ElectroMobility Poland, once tied to China’s Geely, turned to Taiwan’s Foxconn for its electric vehicle project. Taiwanese manufacturers also announced a 150-hectare technology park, and at the Warsaw Taiwan Expo in June 2026, they confirmed Miękinia in Lower Silesia as the site, alongside a parallel Foxconn semiconductor project. On the other hand, Chinese industrial investment has bifurcated rather than collapsed. While Stellantis stopped assembling the Leapmotor EV in Tychy in early 2025, Ronbay is building cathode production in Konin, and Kingfa a polymer plant in Szprotawa, with the latter calling Poland a strategic entry point for the European market.

Despite this, Taiwanese investment may continue to be the preferred option as it raises fewer security objections in Warsaw, arrives with fewer political conditions attached, and reduces Polish dependence on China – a country that keeps Russia’s war economy running. Chinese trade offers none of that, whatever its scale and affordability.

Two Offices, One Policy

With that in view, one possible opening for Beijing could be Poland’s institutional landscape. A government markedly skeptical of China shares power with a president who could, in theory, be approached differently. Karol Nawrocki, in office since 2025, has been described as a diplomatic wild card, and his Trump-aligned transatlanticism sits alongside relatively warm but laconic readouts of his meeting with Wang Yi.

But so far, Beijing has made little of that opening. Wang Yi’s September 2025 visit to Warsaw, the first by a Chinese foreign minister in six years, produced no substantive result and was described as a “dialogue of the deaf.” Beijing has also accelerated bypass strategies through the Middle Corridor and a new China-Europe Arctic Container Express route. The latter does not exclude Poland, but it may reduce Warsaw’s value as a transit gateway – an area where it arguably holds genuine leverage.

Part of the reason is that Poland’s domestic split has produced less divergence than one might think. Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski delivered one of the government’s sharpest lines on China in his address to the Sejm, warning that without Beijing’s help Russia’s economy would have collapsed by now, and the presidential camp has not contradicted that reading. Nawrocki also signed the previously mentioned “Lex Huawei” into law, and his transatlanticism, however differently styled, rests on the same two premises as the government’s: that the US is Poland’s indispensable partner and Russia is its principal adversary. Therefore, while the institutional cohabitation in Warsaw may be adversarial on numerous files, China does not seem to be one of them, which leaves Beijing little to work with.

Channels Stay Open

Working-level contact continues regardless. The 8th Poland-China Strategic Dialogue, held in Beijing in June 2026, discussed a possible high-level visit to mark the 10th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership and set out rules for Polish poultry exports. But less than two months later came the export-control listings that included Polish entities.

That sequence captures the gist of Polish-Chinese relations relatively well. Beijing keeps the diplomatic machinery running while presenting the restrictions as aimed at the EU as a whole rather than at any country in particular. Warsaw keeps the same machinery running while treating China as an integral part of a security problem rather than a trade file to be handled on its own terms. 

This equilibrium is likely to hold. With Donald Trump in the White House and the war in Ukraine unresolved, Poland’s attention remains fixed on Europe and Washington, and its China policy remains pragmatic, skeptical, and cautious. Warsaw will likely keep the channels open and accept the economic benefits available without seeking deeper cooperation. What sets the limit is not hostility but security. Poland judges its partners by what they contribute to its position vis-à-vis Russia, and on that measure China, which keeps Russia’s war economy running, arguably has little to offer. As long as China’s partnership with Russia holds, this judgment is likely to remain.

This article is part of the 2025-2026 CEE China Policy Audit to be published by CHOICE in September 2026.