（来源：CGTN 2026-06-18）
European leaders are meeting in Brussels for a two-day summit. Major topics include economic challenges, the Ukraine crisis, and migration. Behind the scenes, one issue has proven so contentious that officials have reportedly tiptoed towards a trade confrontation with China. Our reporter Zhou Jiaxin has the following analysis.
ZHOU JIAXIN, CGTN "The Financial Times in a recent report says EU member states are so divided over how to handle trade ties with China that the European Council President, Antonio Costa, is reluctant to put the issue to a formal vote. The word 'China', accordingly, may not even appear in this week's summit statement. So what is the divide? And where are China-EU trade relations heading? To understand the current economic and trade disputes, one must look beyond the European accusation of so-called 'overcapacity' and 'unfair competition', and examine a fundamental structural shift."
TU XINQUAN, Dean, China Institute for WTO Studies, University of International Business and Economics "With persistent investment and innovation, China has taken the lead in new energy industry and technology. Actually, most of Chinese increased trade surplus with the EU in recent years comes from this sector. The EU still has its own competitive advantages in many industries, but the two sides need to adjust the model of cooperation and competition."
Despite a strong demand for green transformation, the European Commission last month called the rising trade deficit, now €1bn a day, 'unsustainable' and has threatened fresh tariffs on Chinese goods to protect what reports suggest is the bloc's rapidly eroding industrial base, with sectors such as the car industry under particular pressure.
DR. HANS-PETER BURGHOF, Chair of the Banking and Finance Department, University of Hohenheim, Germany "We must go down this bureaucracy. We must become more efficient in this respect. We must go down on these costs. We must also rethink our green policy, because the truth is China is very efficient. So, we can't compete under the act of framework in the long run. Any protection is only a hold, but not the solution to the problem."
When Europe is anxious about losing its industrial edge, it has begun framing China's economic appeal as a 'risk' – citing 'over-dependence' and calling for 'diversification.' Beijing has pushed back directly on that narrative.
LIN JIAN, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson "European companies make their choice based on cost, technology and efficiency. How is that 'over-dependence'? Isn't 'diversification' in this case just another version of protectionism? This sort of measures will not make the European industry more competitive, and they certainly go against the EU's own stated principles of market economy, fair competition and free trade."
However, Brussels is not speaking with one voice. Behind the push for tougher trade measures lies a growing rift among typical member states.
DR. HANS-PETER BURGHOF, Chair of the Banking and Finance Department, University of Hohenheim, Germany "I think that France has not much profit from this policy. Germany has a lot much stronger market economy tradition. We're losing some of that, but in our trade policy, we still follow this stance which leads to a more open-minded relationship with China under what we could do in trade."
Indeed, France recently proposed a "European version of Section 301" – a unilateral tool modeled on US trade law. But experts say such a tool faces enormous hurdles.
TU XINQUAN, Dean, China Institute for WTO Studies, University of International Business and Economics "The resorting to unilateralism is against the EU's own principles and spirits, rather following the steps of the Trump administration, which have hurt the EU significantly and been criticized by the EU strongly. Moreover, the EU does not have the same leverage as the US in terms of economic coercion or sanctions. And also, EU has an even deeper interdependence relationship with China."
As Europe's largest economy and China's most important trading partner in the bloc, Germany has consistently resisted the push for hard decoupling. On a recent visit to Beijing, Germany's Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, with a delegation of 40 business leaders, sought to expand cooperation with China, not retreat from it.
DR. HANS-PETER BURGHOF, Chair of the Banking and Finance Department, University of Hohenheim, Germany "European companies like to be active in China for several reasons. On the one hand, China's interesting market and the conditions are such that you like to do business there. On the other hand, it is because it is so unattractive to have many things in Europe anymore because of bureaucracy, especially in Germany, everything is very expensive. But what the State delivers, for example public goods, has lost in quality greatly in the last two or three decades."
TU XINQUAN, Dean, China Institute for WTO Studies, University of International Business and Economics "What the EU should do is to attract and utilize as many as resources to enhance its innovation and industrialization capability in new emerging industries, including welcoming Chinese investments and technology in an open and non-discriminative manner."
MAO NING, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson "Complementarity is not a risk, and convergence of interests is not a threat. Over the past five decades or so, the annual trade volume between China and Europe has soared by over 300 times, with two-way investment totaling nearly US$260 billion. The figures are a strong testament to the robust momentum and promising prospects of China-EU cooperation."
ZHOU JIAXIN, CGTN "Aside from the formal agenda of the summit, the debate over how to manage the world's most consequential trade relationship after the China-US dynamic will not go away. China's position remains consistent throughout: cooperation benefits both, confrontation harms both. The question now is whether Europe can overcome its internal divisions and choose the path of sustainable adjustment over protectionism."
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