"firms would be required to establish joint ventures with local partners; transfer technology and know-how to such partners; conduct research and development in Europe" [joint ventures]
These specific requirements — joint ventures, technology transfer, local R&D — are the precise mechanisms China used for decades, now being institutionalized by the EU, directly supporting the claim of structural policy convergence.
Reasoning from this article
The article explicitly frames the IAA as a 'reverse Deng' — the EU adopting the same coercive investment conditions that China used to build its industrial base. This is not merely protectionism but a structural shift: liberal market economies are abandoning reciprocal openness norms and adopting state-directed industrial policy tools previously associated with authoritarian developmental states. The pattern generalizes beyond the EU to any advanced economy facing competitive pressure from state-subsidized Chinese industry in strategic sectors like EVs and batteries.