What happened in China Beijing has not sat quietly. China formally voiced concern over the EU's Industrial Accelerator Act and its restrictions on foreign investment in strategic sectors. The response matters less for what Beijing said than for what Brussels did: for the first time, three separate policy levers — research exclusion, infrastructure security, and industrial content rules — were pulled in near-simultaneous sequence. ## How it works / the detail The three-front move breaks down as follows. Research exclusion. Chinese entities are now blocked from participating in three separate clusters of Horizon Europe in 2026, covering artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, semiconductors, and biotechnology. A new draft of the €93.5 billion Horizon Europe programme for 2026–27 proposes formally barring Chinese institutions from most research and innovation funding. This builds on a 2023 blanket ban on Chinese organisations taking part in Horizon Europe innovation projects that produce results close to…