The European Union’s top officials Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa are set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing as China and China, which are hanging with tensions in Ra, mark 50 years of diplomatic relations.
Von der Leyen and Costa, who head the European Commission and Council of Europe, respectively, will arrive in Beijing on Thursday to arrive at the 25th EU-China Summit. However, it was unclear whether von del Reyen and Costa would actually meet with Xi due to the ongoing political tensions between Brussels and Beijing.
Their meeting was originally planned as a two-day summit in Brussels, but according to a report from the Financial Times, XI refused to be invited to attend, citing people familiar with the issue.
For the first time this week, China’s Foreign Ministry officially confirmed that a meeting between Xi Jinping, von der Leyen, Costa and the Chinese Prime Minister will move forward.
Marina Rudyak, an assistant professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University in Germany, said she billed the event as an opportunity to reset ties with Europe.
“What we often see from China’s side is that this is very constant: “Let’s normalize relationships and focus on practical cooperation. Let’s focus on where we agree and disagree,” Rudyak told Al Jazeera.
Prior to the summit, Chinese state media released a positive analysis of EU-China relations. This is a report that is often seen as an indirect way that Chinese officials comment on the issue of the day.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said during his meeting with reporters that he described China-EU relations in glorious and glorious words on Tuesday.
“Now, China-EU relations are at a critical time, building buildings based on past achievements and opening new chapters,” Guo said.
“Relationships face both new opportunities and new challenges,” Guo added, “There is an increasingly turbulent international landscape, with increasing unilateral environmentalism and protectionism.”
Ukraine’s tensions over new jiang
Despite Beijing’s offer of olive branches to Brussels, the EU and China are low among Western observers that the EU and China will see a major breakthrough due to several ongoing and long-term conflicts.
The EU and China frequently refrain from issues such as human rights and political oppression in places including Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, but relations changed in 2021 when the EU approved Chinese officials to curb ethnic Uighur Muslims.
China responded with its own sanctions against 10 Europeans, including members of the European Parliament and several think tanks.
Beijing sent sanctions on European MEPS in April before the EU-China summit, but since Moscow launched full-scale Ukrainian invasion in 2022, other political fractures remain on their continued and close ties with Russia.
Beijing is also widely seen as economically floating around Russia amid ongoing international sanctions, particularly by purchasing Russian energy exports.
The EU has also accused China of cleaning army bandages by selling “dual use” items to Russia, which can be used for civilian and military purposes.
China defended its action and said it wanted to see “negotiations, ceasefires, peace” in Ukraine.
Still, according to Rudyjak at the University of Heidelberg, European officials reportedly told his EU counterpart that China’s foreign minister king reportedly told his EU counterpart in June that Beijing did not want to see Russia unleash its attention with Ukraine.
The bloc continues to scrutinise Beijing’s economic ties with Russia, and last week approved two banks of China for the first time as part of its latest sanctions package against Moscow, which aimed to end the war. Five Chinese-based companies were also included on the EU’s sanctions list.
China’s Commerce Ministry said sanctions on Chinese banks and businesses “seriously hurt” trade and economic ties with the EU, threatening to respond with its own measures against Europe.
William Yang, a senior Northeast Asia analyst at Crisis Group, a Brussels-based nonpartisan think tank, said those issues will cast a shadow over the EU-China summit on Thursday.
“Beijing sees relations with Russia as a core concern in its ongoing competition with the US and continues to deny the EU’s criticism that it is an enabler of Russian war against Ukraine,” Yang said.
“Because of these fundamental contradictions, there is no prospect of a significant breakthrough at the upcoming summit.”
Close but bumpy trade relations
Another recent source of tension is the economic relations between the EU and China.
China is the EU’s third largest trade partner for goods and services, but EU officials are concerned about an expanding trade deficit with China, which doubled its value between 2015 and 2024, reaching 300 billion euros ($35.9 billion) last year, according to EU trade data.
The EU and member states have long accused them of overproduction and “dumping” exports submitted by cheap states in the European market, but this issue has been rising recently.
“Europe’s view on trade and balance is slightly different from the US. It’s basically about who will be number one. This is a dimension that doesn’t exist in Europe,” Rujak said.
“Europe is really worried about core industries, including automobiles. There is a great concern about China’s EV overcapacity being dumped into the EU market at a price that European companies can’t compete with, and subsidizing China’s overcapacity, which is congesting European backbone industries,” she continued.
European automakers are also struggling with Beijing’s recent decision to curb the export of rare earth minerals and magnets, essential components of many auto parts and electric vehicles.
Beijing has launched its own investigation into Europe’s “dumping” targeting important products such as dairy products, brandy and pork.
According to Wang Yi-Wei, director of the EU Research Centre at Renmin University in China’s capital, Beijing has other frustration with Europe despite its attempts to reset relations.
At the top of Beijing’s list is the EU’s often-opposing approach to US-China relations, Wang said.
“China is sometimes engaged in hopeful thinking in the hope that Europe will resist our influence. In reality, the EU is hoping to balance resistance to American rule and cooperation with the United States.
China hopes that the EU will stop portraying their relationship as one of “competitive cooperation,” and instead sees it through the paradigm of “cooperative competition,” he pointed out.
With hopes for a breakthrough donkey, Crisis Group EU analyst Marta Mucznik said the observers hope that the summit will open up channels of communication between officials from at least both sides.
“The EU does not expect a breakthrough from this summit, but sees it as an opportunity to keep communication channels open with Chinese leaders while working to carve out geopolitical roles and reduce critical dependencies,” she said.
