Why would you need to keep Europe safe? It's not your colony, I'd much rather prefer if China wanted to keep us safe, by their track record over last 50 years seems like much more peaceful country than US, I don't see them invading other countries, kidnapping presidents, bombing schools full of kids or otherwise kill civillians outside China.

So what Europe need is strong economy to counter US and keep us safe from them, the most dangerous country for world peace together with Israel.

Sadly for EU they will keep shooting themselves in one leg with RU sanctions and shooting themselves to other leg with Green Deal nonsense, so you don't really need strong economy to be better than EU, just a bit of common sense.