It is a make-or-break second for China’s relationship with the European Union, because the bloc’s commerce chief asks for extra openness and equity from Beijing.
“We stand at a crossroads. We can choose a path towards mutually beneficial relations. One which is based on open, fair trade and investment, and working hand in hand on the great challenges of our time,” Valdis Dombrovskis, government vice chairman of the European Commission, stated at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Monday.
“Or we can choose a path that slowly moves us apart. Where the shared benefits we enjoyed in recent decades weaken, and fade. And, as a result, where our people and economies face reduced opportunities,” he added.
This is among the sharpest wording to return from European officers and follows information that confirmed the EU logging a commerce deficit of virtually 400 billion euros with China in 2022.
“Last year, the EU registered record bilateral trade with China of 865 billion euros ($921 billion). But this is very unbalanced, because the EU has a trade deficit of almost 400 billion euros,” Dombrovskis stated Saturday earlier than an viewers in Shanghai, the place he started his four-day journey to China late final week.
The go to, which was some time within the making, coincidentally got here lower than two weeks after the European Commission, the manager arm of the EU, opened an investigation into Chinese subsidies to electrical automobile producers.
While the EU argues that Chinese help to EVs is creating distortions within the European market, Beijing authorities criticize what they described as “protectionist” views from Brussels.
Dombrovskis is utilizing the journey to clarify to his Chinese counterparts that the probe goals to create fairer buying and selling practices, and that the EU doesn’t plan to chop ties with Beijing.
In current months, the EU has put an increasing number of emphasis on the concept of de-risking from China — an idea that tries to bridge the hole between a extra aggressive U.S. decoupling and the EU’s consciousness that China is a crucial buying and selling associate.
“De-risk. This means minimising our strategic dependencies for a select number of strategic products. Acting in a proportionate and targeted way to maintain our open strategic autonomy,” Dombrovskis clarified in a speech in Shanghai.
De-risking, not decoupling
European officers have harassed their plan is to not decouple from China and have appeared to affect the United States to take the identical method.
In a joint assertion of the Group of Seven, the world’s seven largest economies, the U.S. agreed there’s a have to de-risk from Beijing.
“It looks more like it’s China decoupling from Europe, and Europe is becoming ever more dependent on China,” Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, instructed CNBC’s “Asia Squawk Box” on Monday.
“When you look at the facts, you look at the figures, it looks like the decoupling is going the other direction,” he stated, noting that China has been “de-risking itself for decades.”
One of the areas the place the EU is seeking to de-risk is the electrical automobile sector, after the share of such China-made automobiles offered into Europe rose to eight% this 12 months. European officers have stated this slice may attain 15% by 2025.
EV market developments are significantly vital forward of a European deadline to finish the sale of latest diesel and petrol automobiles by 2035.
Eskelund additionally stated that European automakers arrange factories and have as much as 95% of their complete manufacturing worth chain in China.
“They create jobs, they pay taxes in China,” he stated, including, “What we’re looking at now is… 100% produced-in-China imports [coming] into Europe.”
When requested about potential retaliation from China over the investigation, Eskelund maintained that each Europe and Beijing have “very deep interests” to attempt to resolve the matter earlier than it reaches a degree of imposing punitive tariffs.
“The two sides need to sit down and have a grown up conversation about what some of the barriers are,” he stated.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan contributed to this report
Source web site: www.cnbc.com
