EU leaders raise trade imbalance concerns with China's Xi
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Transcript
00:00 absolutely the trade imbalance between the EU and China is the
00:04 sticking point for Brussels. Both Charles Michel and Ursula von der
00:09 Leyen spoke multiple times about that 400 billion euro a year deficit
00:13 and President von der Leyen actually said, as you heard a little
00:17 earlier, that President Xi purportedly agreed that this should
00:20 be a little bit more balanced. She also claims that the Chinese
00:23 side has shown willingness to clarify the rules on cross-border
00:28 data flows. This is something foreign companies struggle with. The
00:31 movement or transfer of information between servers and countries
00:35 isn't that easy. There are a lot of unclear rules that really makes
00:38 doing business here rather difficult. I have spoken to several
00:41 EU business representatives here who have told me that China has
00:44 been sending mixed signals by speaking a lot about foreign
00:47 investment in public but actually on the ground coming up with
00:51 confusing or vague regulations. This is something a lot of them
00:54 struggle to comprehend despite their best efforts. On the EU side
00:59 they talk about the preferential treatment of Chinese companies,
01:03 the difficulties in accessing the Chinese market and the over
01:06 capacity of Chinese production. This is why they speak about this
01:10 unlevel playing field. It does seem like this Thursday the Chinese
01:15 side have told the EU, look, I kind of get your point, without
01:19 offering any concrete deals. As predicted, no major announcements.
01:24 Just the promise of hammering out the details in further talks,
01:27 high-level meetings to come. A lot of talk, not much action. All of
01:32 this as the EU elections loom ahead. That event could affect the
01:36 bloc's policy towards Beijing. The EU and China are each the second
01:43 largest trading partner for the other. How is it that this is the
01:48 first in-person meeting in four years? Yes, the EU and China trade
01:57 2.3 billion goods per day. It has certainly been a long time for two
02:01 such important trading partners to meet face-to-face. Covid-19 and
02:05 those harsh measures that China took, closing their borders off,
02:09 definitely have been a factor. That said, the reality is Beijing
02:13 doesn't really take Brussels as seriously as it does Washington or
02:17 other major individual states. And of course, relations between the
02:21 two have been extremely difficult in recent years. Ursula von der Leyen
02:26 in particular has been quite vocal about the EU's official stance,
02:30 criticising in public China for being more and more repressive at
02:34 home and less and less open to the world. Her promotion of the concept
02:38 of de-risking particularly irks the Chinese side. She took care to say
02:44 in her press conference this Thursday that the Chinese have a
02:47 similar concept. She said they call it self-reliance and that the EU
02:50 doesn't want to decouple like it did with Russia, it is just important
02:54 for their strategic autonomy. But despite the difficulties in their
02:59 relationships, there has been a recent flurry in meetings, high-level
03:03 meetings between the two sides. The EU clearly needs it because there
03:06 is this war in Ukraine and because of this trade imbalance. But the
03:10 Chinese side too increasingly needs this diplomatic flurry too
03:15 because of its own sluggish economy.