Dispatch from Beijing: A Summit of Cold Shoulders
Some thoughts before tomorrow's meeting
The 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the European Union and China should be an occasion for celebration.
Instead, the 25th EU-China summit which takes place in Beijing tomorrow looks looks set to be a sombre affair, with nothing to shout about for either side.
Originally scheduled to take place over two days, the summit has been reduced to just one because of a ‘scheduling conflict’ at the Chinese end - a (reasonably) polite way of asking people to get their coats and leave.
There will be no banquet, no big entertainment, no joint communiqué in sight and no great expectations. EU officials will be in Beijing because they must be, not because they expect a breakthrough. Earlier this year, meanwhile, President Xi Jinping declined an invitation to travel to Brussels to mark the anniversary.
Tensions between the EU and China have been rising for months.
At the centre of the dispute is trade. European manufacturers complain that their markets are being flooded with heavily subsidised Chinese goods. Across the continent, firms are struggling to compete with imports of cheap steel, solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles.
That was already an issue before President Trump got to work on tariffs; with price hurdles in place in the US, Chinese manufacturers have increasingly sought to find homes for their goods - and at any price.
That’s good for consumers and good for curbing inflation; but it’s bad news for domestic industries that already struggle to compete with the scale that China can provide.
The European Commission has already imposed provisional anti-subsidy duties on Chinese electric cars and launched investigations into exports of construction equipment and medical devices.
A recent study by the German Economic Institute found that the yuan is significantly undervalued, which has helped Chinese exporters gain an unfair price advantage in European markets. The EU’s trade deficit with China now exceeds €400 billion annually, raising concerns in Brussels that Europe is sleepwalking into a new era of economic dependence.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been forthright. ‘We must be clear-eyed,’ she said in a speech earlier this year. ‘China is simultaneously a partner, a competitor and a systemic rival.’ That final term, ‘systemic rival,’ has become the defining phrase in Brussels’ new approach to Beijing. It reflects not just trade grievances, but growing discomfort about China’s internal politics, its international assertiveness, and - most urgently - its support for Russia.
European concerns about China’s role in Russia’s war against Ukraine have become increasingly explicit. While Beijing insists it remains neutral and does not supply lethal aid, a growing body of evidence suggests that Chinese firms are providing Moscow with the materials and technologies it needs to sustain its war effort.
In May, Ukraine’s military intelligence reported that over 20 Russian defence factories were receiving Chinese-sourced chemicals, gunpowder, machine tools and electronic components. A separate investigation by independent researchers found that 80% of critical components in Russian drones recovered from the battlefield were manufactured in China.
These reports have not gone unnoticed in Brussels, at not at NATO headquarters. Former Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned earlier this year that ‘Russia would not have been able to sustain its aggression against Ukraine without significant support from China.’
The sentiment was echoed last week by NATO’s ambassador to Washington, Matthew Whitaker, who accused China of ‘subsidising Russia’s war in Ukraine,’ adding that ‘Beijing sees this as a proxy conflict through which it can undermine the West without firing a shot.’
Beijing rejects these claims. Foreign Ministry spokesperson He Yongqian recently urged European leaders to ‘make fewer accusations, be less protectionist, and be more open.’ China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, meanwhile, has pushed back against European sanctions on Chinese banks for alleged support to Russia as ‘politically motivated and legally baseless.’ For its part, China insists that its trade with Russia is lawful, limited to civilian goods, and not in violation of any international agreements. Yet the mood in Brussels is one of deepening distrust.
Beyond Ukraine, EU officials are also frustrated by what they see as a lack of reciprocity in trade and investment. While Chinese companies enjoy broad access to the European market, European firms face significant restrictions in China, especially in sectors such as telecommunications, finance and medical technology.
Promises of reform, most notably those tied to the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment signed in principle in 2020, have gone unfulfilled. Ratification of that deal is now politically impossible, derailed by China’s apparent unwillingness to compromise, and not helped by sanctions on European parliamentarians.
In private, EU diplomats say they expect little from this week’s summit. Discussions will likely touch on climate cooperation, rare earths, and the need for mutual economic stability. But no major announcements are anticipated. ‘This is not a summit of deliverables,’ one senior EU official told Reuters. ‘It’s a summit of grievances.’
Even the optics are underwhelming. There will be no joint press conference, no high-level business forum, and no new investment agreements. EU Council President António Costa and Commission President von der Leyen will meet Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, but the mood is more ritualistic than productive. It is a place-holder summit, rather than one where anything substantive can or will get done.
Underlying all this is a wider strategic dilemma.
Above all, Europe wants to avoid being caught in the middle of escalating US–China tensions. After all, the EU trades more with China than it does with the United States; European states (including the UK) are heavily reliant on Chinese-made components for everything from electric cars to green energy. Yet as Beijing grows closer to Moscow, and as Chinese overcapacity threatens European industry, the calls in Brussels to ‘de-risk’ relations with China are growing louder.
As Josep Borrell, the EU’s former top diplomat, put it in 2022 ‘The EU should recognise China even more as a competitor and reduce its economic dependency’. The mood music could have changed - had Beijing sought to take advantage of a unique set of opportunities that have presented themselves with the election of Donald Trump to a second term.
It is telling, though, that no effort has been made to capitalise on those openings. As some old China hands often say, Beijing never wastes an opportunity to waste an opportunity.
Instead, this summit is one that frames EU-China relations as that of managed confrontation. The EU and China still talk. But they are not speaking the same language of trust, mutual gain and finding areas of geoeconomic, geopolitical and strategic cooperation.
Instead, they are bound together by economic necessity and political divergence. For all the pageantry of anniversaries and summits, this is not a golden jubilee; instead it looks and feels like a chilly one.