For a brief moment, it looked like the turmoil sparked by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs might defrost relations between the EU and China, with this week’s summit widely hoped to be the culmination of that thaw.
Except, none of it happened.
Thursday’s summit in Beijing — intended to mark 50 years of diplomatic ties — did at least take place, but it exposed irreconcilable divisions over trade imbalances, market access, and geopolitical tensions, leaving the relationship at what EU leaders now describe as an “inflection point.”
“Unlike other major markets, Europe keeps its market open to Chinese goods. This reflects our longstanding commitment to rules-based trade. However, this openness is not matched by China,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a press conference after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang.
That message, sharp by the standards of diplomatic protocol, laid bare that China has no intention of addressing Brussels’ key demands — from opening its market to European businesses and curbing the export of unfairly cheap goods, to halting purchases of Russian oil that help fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Misplaced hopes of a pivot
“A few months ago, there was a point where the question was: Is there going to be any way in which China is willing to take steps of its own to help address some of the surging excess capacities and exports? Is there anything that could potentially be agreed on a somewhat more benign framework for Chinese investments in Europe?” said Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund (GMF) think tank.
While the answer was always likely to be ‘no,’ “there was some reason at least to explore [a rapprochement with China] given the context that both sides faced,” Small told The Parliament.
But by the eve of the summit, hopes for any concrete outcomes had faded. Instead of addressing some of the EU’s requests, China had instead piled up a wish-list of its own that spanned from lifting tariffs on electric vehicles (EVs), imposed by the EU last year, to halting the use of the bloc’s foreign subsidy regulation. In exchange, it promised eased export restrictions on critical raw materials, on which most EU industries are dependent.
In the meantime, things had also gone downhill on other fronts. Just weeks ahead of the meeting, the EU agreed to sanction two Chinese banks as part of the 18th sanctions package against Russia, and took steps to restrict Chinese medical devices in its public procurement after finding the country responsible for discriminatory practices against EU medtech.
Meanwhile, in a severe diplomatic blow, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas that Beijing did not wish to see Russia losing the war as it would have led to enhanced US attention towards China.
For many analysts, the idea that the EU could have stabilised its long-troubled relations with China through diplomacy alone has always been somewhat delusional, given that the underlying dynamics between the two sides had remained unchanged — if not worsened.
“The playing field with China has not shifted at all,” Jasper Roctus, a fellow at the Egmont Institute, told The Parliament, calling hopes for a rapprochement a “mistaken perception from the beginning.” “It's not surprising to see that no progress has been made,” he added.
According to data from the European Commission, the EU receives 14.5% of China’s exports, as opposed to China importing only 8% of EU goods — a trade imbalance that Von der Leyen blamed on “trade distortions” and a set of “market barriers,” such as the presence of a “Made in China” policy granting local manufacturers preferential conditions in Chinese public tenders.
“The EU's trade deficit with China has doubled in the last decade reaching more than €300 billion,” Von der Leyen told the press conference. “We have reached a clear inflection point.”
‘Everything’s on the table’ negotiating approach
Hopes that China might be willing to reshape its relationship with Europe on new terms were largely driven by the escalating trade war that had pitted Beijing squarely against Washington.
Earlier this year, China was the only country to immediately retaliate against Donald Trump’s tariffs, in a move that saw duties on both sides surge beyond the 100% mark within days. At the same time, the EU saw its transatlantic relations plummeting at record low as it contended with Trump’s mercurial trade threats and actual tariffs destabilising some of its key industries.
But a truce between Washington and Beijing in June left the EU isolated, giving China the upper hand to exploit Europe’s newly weakened position — something that Beijing did by turning to a negotiating tactic that observers have compared to Trump’s approach. That involved drawing up a list of irritants and seeing whether the EU was willing to give in on any of those, whether or not they were directly linked to trade issues.
“The [Chinese] approach to the European side has been ‘everything is on the table,’” the GMF’s Small said. “Here are all the concerns that we have and we should treat this as just part of an integrated negotiation.”
What’s next for EU-China relations?
China’s forceful approach resulted in little more than a standoff at Thursday's summit, with European leaders refusing to lift tariffs on Chinese EVs — one of Beijing’s top demands — in exchange for eased restrictions on rare earths.
“If the EU had really struck a deal, [trading] lower EV tariffs for Chinese rare earths, it would have sent the wrong signal,” said Roctus, adding that the bloc is not that “desperate” yet to make these concessions.
Still, the gloomy summit leaves a pressing question: Where do EU-China relations go from here?
Lingering optimism rests on the notion that, while the EU relies heavily on China for its rare earths supply, China is equally dependent on access to the vast European market for its exports. “China cannot afford to lose the EU for too long,” noted Roctus, pointing out that an unpredictable Trump leaves Beijing with no guarantees that its truce with the US will hold.
But for Small, the summit was a stark reminder that Brussels has likely spent too much political bandwidth preparing for elusive US negotiations and too little grappling with the headaches coming from China.
“For all the claims that there was a Chinese charm offensive, there just wasn’t from the Chinese side,” Small said. “They [the Chinese] do not want a new kind of relationship.”
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