Next week’s EU-China summit will be in Beijing because Chinese President Xi Jinping wouldn’t come to Brussels. To scornful American security types, the shift signifies more European kowtowing to China.

The summit won’t produce the “grand bargain” with China that some Europeans fantasise about. Still, it’s momentous. Europeans find themselves surrounded by three hostile powers — Russia, the US and China — one of which they barely understand. China is never a priority for the EU, often getting bumped off meeting agendas, Nadine Godehardt of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told last week’s Asia Society France conference in Paris. Europeans haven’t yet decided how to handle China. Washington has anointed it chief enemy, but for Europe that position is filled by Russia. Indeed, the lack of a common enemy has helped alienate Europeans from Americans.

“We don’t really know what China wants with Europe,” says Jean-Fran?ois Huchet of France’s National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations. I’ve been listening to experts, especially the west’s tiny coterie of Chinese-speaking scholars, to understand what China wants and how Europe should respond.