I'm not sure if EU can be considered as a party able to care about own interest. It's just a group that is more concerned about US than common European interest. If it were an independent factor, we would already have own army and there would be no US occupation^H "support" troops scattered at every strategic point in Europe.
And Europe would have strong rules that would limit the influence of US traditional and social media in Europe, that basically create what Europeans think and want.
So yes, if China wants to be number one, it will focus on harming the current number one, and not his minions, which will sooner or later just change their master when number one changes.
US as Europe's whipping boy knows little bounds. The US has repeatedly asked EU countries to stop funding Putin's war machine and fund their own militaries with something substantial. Most EU countries have continued to poo-poo this, forcing US to spend 4% GDP on defense while Germany has gotten away with 1% while funding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Trump was threatening to remove majority of military funding to Germany and they were aghast, "how dare the US not spend their $ to protect us." Of course people like you still somehow make US patronage of your defense into an "occupation." We'd be ecstatic if you actually funded your own instead of making us just to keep international order.
If you think USA is doing us a favour, just leave Europe, and Middle East, and Africa, and Asia. Just go back to your continent and let us deal with Putin and other challenges best we can. We don't need neither your "protection" nor your "protection fee".
Maybe without US warmongering, we would not need to be afraid of Russia. German technology and Russian resources is something that USA might be scared to death to end its world domination.
The interested parties in this war are NATO countries and Russia, besides Ukraine, because the war is a consequence of decades of hostilities regarding the re-alignment of the ex-USSR territories East of Poland towards the West and against Russia.
Russia has announced they have the right to expand their borders using aggression. They have committe the supreme international crime, as judged at Nuremberg. If countries aren't subscribing to that world view anymore, then we are lost. We are doomed to have a world war three. The entire fucking point of these institutions is to prevent another one. If nothing else China should be an institutionalist, preserving the international system of laws for its own long term interest.
Maybe it's lost on people, but Poland told NATO in 1993 that if they weren't allowed to join, they were going to build their own nukes. Because they didn't trust Russia. They weren't the only one.
If the U.N. Charter system dissolves, the NPT falls soon after that. And then it's an arms race.
China being against US interest in general makes perfect sense to me, but against the EU it just does not make as much sense.