China and the European Union (EU) leaders agreed their trade relationship should be more balanced at their first in-person summit in four years. The EU-China 24th Summit in Beijing on December 7, 2023.
President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen met with China’s President Xi Jinping, followed by a separate meeting with China’s Premier Li Qiang at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing.
Xi urged China and the EU to collaborate as cooperative partners, enhance mutual political trust, establish strategic agreements, reinforce shared interests, avoid interference, and increase dialogue and cooperation for the benefit of their citizens.
“It is incumbent on both sides to provide greater stability for the world and stronger impetus for development,” Xi added.
EU leaders raise trade imbalance concerns with Xi Jinping
Chinese President and the European Union leaders during the meeting discussed their disputes over trade, subsidies, and a deep divide over the Russia-Ukraine war. The EU called on Beijing to improve market access to address an annual trade imbalance of over $200 billion between China and the EU.
“China is the EU’s most important trading partner,” Von der Leyen said in opening remarks posted on the commission’s website. “But there are clear imbalances and differences that we must address.”
Xi said that Beijing and Brussels should resolve the differences through talks, and pushed back against what the Chinese government sees as a shift in Europe toward a more strident and competitive approach to China.
“We should not view each other as rivals just because our systems are different, reduce cooperation because competition exists, or engage in confrontation because there are disagreements,” he said, according to China’s Foreign Ministry.
Xi tells EU leaders China wants to be ‘Key Partner’ on trade
Chinese President Xi Jinping told European Union leaders that China wants to be a key trade partner capable of building trust over supply chains.
As “China is pursuing high-quality development and high-level opening up, it sees EU as a key partner in economic and trade cooperation,” Xi said in a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel. He said China wants to consider Europe a “trusted partner in industrial and supply chain cooperation to pursue mutual benefit and win-win results,” China’s foreign ministry said in its statement.
Europe is pursuing a strategy aimed at “de-risking” its relations with China and has lately expressed growing concerns over unfair trade practices. This includes an investigation into potential state subsidies for electric vehicle manufacturers.
Other areas of tension between Europe and China involve Taiwan, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and qualms of Chinese companies aiding Russia in bypassing sanctions and an expanding trade deficit, which reached €390 billion (US$420.5 billion) in China’s favor last year.
While expectations for significant progress are still low, both sides sent encouraging signals following the morning meeting. The Chinese President told von der Leyen and Michel that Beijing and Brussels should “form accurate perceptions of each other and strengthen mutual understanding and trust” and be “trustful and faithful and put their hearts and minds into developing their relationship,” according to a statement from the Chinese foreign ministry.
“The economies of China and Europe highly complement each other. Both sides should make more efforts to tighten the bonds of the China-EU community of shared interests through deeper and broader cooperation,” Xi said.
The European leaders said they were “looking forward to developing a consistently stable, predictable, sustainable relationship with China”, according to the Chinese statement. The bloc “hopes to continue dialogue and cooperation” in areas including trade and the green and digital economies, as well as maintaining supply chains, they added.