The EU’s “de-risking” strategy has prompted staunch rejection from China which has gone to great lengths to reduce vulnerabilities due to the increasingly weaponised interdependences and to enhance economic security, notably through its Dual Circulation Strategy. Why is China advancing two ostensibly contrasting strategies and narratives, and how does China justify these two inconsistent positions to its domestic and foreign audiences ? Drawing upon the norms dynamics roles-spectrum and role conflict theory, this study argues that China’s domestic promotion of the DCS and concurrently external rejection of de-risking stems primarily from its role conflict between a “competitor entrepreneur” that prudently promotes norm change in the domestic realm amidst an entrenched normative status quo of Reform and Opening-up, and a norm “antipreneur” that defends externally the normative status quo of economic liberalism. As such, Beijing needs to navigate in different normative conditions in which it enacts dissimilar roles vis-à-vis different audiences. This research sheds light on the battle of norms and narratives amidst the current geopolitical rivalry, and is thus relevant for the ongoing scholarly debates on geoeconomics, norm contestation, and de-risking with a focus on China.