Circular Battery Value Chains, Green Industrial Governance, and Sustainable Competitiveness: Comparative Business Systems Evidence from the European Union and China

Abstract

This article examines how circular battery value chains reshape green industrial governance, business systems, market competitiveness, and sustainable socio-economic development. Using a comparative case study of the European Union and China, the study argues that battery circularity is not merely an environmental waste-management agenda but a strategic economic governance problem involving industrial policy, technological innovation, supply-chain resilience, market regulation, corporate accountability, and resource security. The European Union represents a regulatory-market model that seeks to create sustainable battery competitiveness through lifecycle standards, carbon-footprint disclosure, recycled-content requirements, battery passports, critical raw material diversification, and circular economy regulation. China represents a strategic developmental production model characterized by large-scale electric vehicle deployment, dominant battery manufacturing capabilities, industrial policy coordination, extended producer responsibility, power-battery traceability systems, and rapid recycling-sector expansion. The findings reveal that circular battery competitiveness depends on the institutional capacity to coordinate material flows, innovation systems, corporate governance, recycling infrastructure, energy systems, and international trade. The comparison demonstrates that the European Union is stronger in regulatory standard-setting and sustainability-oriented market governance but weaker in manufacturing scale and upstream resource security, while China is stronger in industrial scale, battery deployment, and recycling capacity but faces challenges of market disorder, governance fragmentation, and environmental accountability. The article contributes to comparative business systems, green industrial policy, circular economy, and sustainable development scholarship by developing propositions on circular industrial governance and resource-based competitiveness.