The scale of Chinese production since 2010 has driven the price of these technologies down by 60 to 90 percent, the researchers found. And last year, more than 90 percent of wind and solar projects commissioned worldwide produced power more cheaply than the cheapest available fossil-fuel alternative, they said. That cost advantage might have seemed laughable before China began pumping billions of dollars of subsidies into the sector.
The article didn’t say China is driving its development (like you say Europe would have researched regardless); it says China is driving its adoption including in foreign nations. The article does leave out European research’s contribution to the cheap production of wind turbines, but the article’s claim is that China’s production and foreign policy is driving new adoption.