Anxiety about the future has become a condition few countries can escape. Across much of the world, younger generations are coming to accept something their parents would once have considered unthinkable: that they may live less comfortably than the generation before them. Their anger is approaching a breaking point.
Voters turn to new parties and leaders in search of change, only to find that a change of government offers little relief. Disparities between countries, companies and individuals widen, feeding resentment. Opportunistic politicians exploit those divisions while postponing the reforms needed to address them. Expediency and populism keep countries trapped in a cycle of disappointment and decline.
Abroad, the confrontation between the United States and China has accelerated a retreat into national self-interest, fragmenting the global economy and weakening the connections that once supported growth. The fear of falling behind increasingly outweighs the hope of getting ahead.
Europe offers a warning of where this can lead.
After a decade of mounting economic vulnerability, anger has spilled onto its streets. As growth falters, households struggling to maintain their living standards see fewer ways out. Higher food, housing and energy costs have eroded purchasing power. Young people face insecure futures. Public services are deteriorating just as governments find themselves with less money to repair them. Distrust of political leaders compounds the frustration.
The protests across Europe do not constitute a single movement, nor do they share one political objective. They are better understood as accumulated grievances reaching their limits at roughly the same time.
External pressures have made matters worse. Russia’s prolonged war against Ukraine has imposed heavy energy costs on Europe, while conflict in the Middle East has added another source of uncertainty.
Closer economic ties with China, once a source of prosperity, have also become a growing vulnerability. Chinese manufacturers are challenging European companies in the industries that underpin employment and regional economies. Meanwhile, strains in relations with Washington have unsettled Europe’s assumptions about both trade and security.
For decades, Europe’s prosperity rested in part on three pillars: Russian energy, the Chinese export market and American security. All three have weakened. The economic model built around them can no longer deliver the same assurance of growth.
Germany’s troubles make the outlook particularly unsettling. Europe depends heavily on its largest economy, yet Germany has lost ground against competitors in both China and the United States. Its real economy has barely grown since 2019.
The pressures are familiar: intensifying Chinese competition, American tariffs, expensive energy and labor, worker shortages and inadequate investment. Beneath them lies a deeper failure to adapt. Germany remained too comfortable with a model that had served it well, even as the conditions supporting that model changed.
Now its automotive industry, the emblem of German manufacturing strength, faces painful restructuring. Volkswagen’s plans to shed 100,000 jobs are the starkest illustration. BMW, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz are also under pressure to slim down and rebuild profitability.
The question for Europe is no longer simply how deep the downturn will be. It is whether the continent can restore the foundations of its prosperity.
Its internal problems would be difficult enough to resolve on their own. The challenge becomes greater when European businesses must undertake that repair while confronting an increasingly formidable Chinese industrial presence.
Chinese competition is not the immediate cause of every protest. But its long-term implications for jobs, wages and the tax revenues that finance public services cannot be dismissed.
Expanding Chinese capacity and increasingly aggressive exports put pressure on European manufacturers’ prices and profits. Those pressures eventually reach household incomes and local economies, deepening discontent and distrust.
Tariffs alone offer limited protection. Chinese companies already have 26 battery and electric vehicle plants in Europe, giving them a local manufacturing presence that can help them sidestep import barriers.
Europe’s response will matter far beyond its borders. The prominence of young people among the protesters should command particular attention. Their anger reflects a loss of confidence in the economic and political arrangements they are expected to inherit.
Governments under such pressure may resort to increasingly forceful measures to revive industry and protect employment. Industrial policy could become more protectionist. Preferences for local procurement and European-made components could change the terms on which foreign suppliers compete.
For Korean companies already fighting for market share against Chinese rivals in Europe, those changes could create opportunities or impose new disadvantages. Much will depend on how the rules are written and where companies manufacture.
Social unrest does not remain confined to the streets. It changes fiscal priorities, industrial strategy and trade policy. Those decisions, in turn, redirect investment and reshape supply chains. Korea cannot afford to watch Europe’s turmoil as though it were a distant domestic affair.
Nor should Koreans assume that their own country stands on safer ground.
The differences are often matters of degree. Here, too, young people are increasingly dissatisfied with the government and the ruling party. Pensions, housing, employment and the cost of living offer them little reason for optimism. They are being asked to shoulder obligations inherited from older generations while finding it harder to secure the opportunities those generations enjoyed.
A society cannot indefinitely expect its young people to accept heavier burdens in exchange for diminishing prospects.
Korean industry also faces an intensifying Chinese challenge. As access to American and European markets becomes more difficult, Chinese companies have stronger incentives to redirect exports toward Korea. The resulting pressure is spreading across domestic industries.
These are not separate problems. Industrial competitiveness sustains jobs and wages. Jobs and wages support households and public finances. When that foundation weakens, economic insecurity becomes political anger, and political anger can make essential reform harder still.
Europe shows how such a cycle takes hold. Korea has enough warning to recognize the danger. Whether it acts on that warning is another matter.
Reform postponed does not become easier. It becomes more expensive, more disruptive and, eventually, unavoidable. Problems that could have been contained through timely action can grow into crises demanding far harsher remedies.
Before asking how Europe acquired so many sick economies, Korea should ask whether it is allowing the same symptoms to go untreated.
**The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of AJP.
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