China’s Latest Grave Threat to Europe’s Economy

By Andrew Stuttaford

Sunday, November 01, 2026

 

China’s push to dominate Europe’s economy, discussed in Capital Letters here, here, and here, may be sinking to new depths as well as heights, according to a new (and seasonally appropriate) report from Politico:

 

European coffin manufacturers are joining forces to ask Brussels to investigate Chinese imports, warning that low prices and potential customs loopholes are threatening an industry built around one of the continent’s most predictable markets: death.

 

Up until recently, the EU’s coffin-makers had failed to form a lobby group in Brussels, which speaks well of their integrity, but not their savvy. However, they now have one, although it does not yet have a name. An anti-dumping (insert burial joke here) complaint against Chinese manufacturers is duly being prepared.

 

To prove dumping, it’s not enough to demonstrate that Chinese coffins are cheaper (they are), but it must be shown that:

 

Chinese producers are selling coffins in the EU below their established normal value, that the EU industry is suffering material injury, and that dumped imports are responsible for that injury.

 

It is claimed, Politico reports, that over the past five years roughly a quarter of European coffin manufacturers have shut down. Their numbers have fallen from about 120 to 90, disappointing given that the number of deaths in the EU (even after smoothing out the numbers to adjust for the Covid bump) has been gently moving up, presumably as the population ages.

 

The numbers are not huge in absolute terms, but Chinese coffin exports have surged since 2022. There are also some peculiar data in Italy which suggest that some, well, skullduggery has been going on, including (possibly) an “IKEA loophole” under which some “Chinese coffins arrive in Europe flat-packed, with their components declared to customs as wooden parts rather than finished funeral products.”  Legally, that shouldn’t work, but detection is the name of the game. There are also suspicions that coffins “are being imported as packaging for other merchandise, rather than declared as commercial products in their own right.”

 

Unlike some of my National Review colleagues (it seems), I have no objections to living forever (under the right, suitably comfortable conditions — being downloaded wouldn’t do the trick), but I don’t see that option becoming available anytime soon.

 

Given that, I’d like a good, massive coffin, made out of metal formidable enough to thwart grave robbers, vandals, and thieves. Chinese-made coffins and caskets are available in the U.S., but judging by a quick online search, none had the appropriate heft (and one, an eco-friendly durable cardboard model, stood out as a box that really did not check mine), so made-in-USA it will be.