At the virtual EU-China summit, Beijing is expected to be pressured by one of its key trading partners over the war in Ukraine, which the European Union says will be the focus of talks. Chinese President Xi Jingping and Premier Li Keqiang will also discuss business relations, human rights and climate change with European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“Senior EU officials have tried unsuccessfully to persuade Beijing to urge Moscow to de-escalate,” Eurasia Group experts wrote in a note on Tuesday. “[They] will now try to recruit Xi, but the feeling in Brussels is that China is not interested in pressuring Russia.”
The disagreement over the Russia-Ukraine crisis contrasts with economic ties between China and Europe, which have deepened during the coronavirus pandemic.
Here’s a look at where things stand — and what’s at stake.
What is on the table
China abstained from voting on a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, worrying many in the West.
“The way China handles this conflict will have an impact on the future of EU-China relations overall,” Reinhard Butikofer, head of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China, told reporters ahead of the summit .
In a statement, EU leaders said they would draw attention to “the international community’s commitment to support Ukraine, the dramatic humanitarian crisis caused by Russia’s aggression, its destabilizing nature for the international order and its inherent global… Effects”.
China has acknowledged the tensions in the room but has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
“The current international situation is volatile,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Beijing has already urged the United States – which, together with the European Union, has imposed tough sanctions on Moscow – so as not to undermine its “legitimate rights and interests”, adding that China and Russia “would continue to conduct normal economic trade cooperation”.
China has long sought to drive a wedge between the United States and the European Union, with officials and state media often pointing to the importance of the bloc’s “strategic autonomy” over Washington.
A top trading partner
Despite the pressure China and the European Union rely heavily on each other for trade deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
China overtook the United States as Europe’s largest trading partner for goods in 2020, with the total value of trade reaching 588 billion euros ($650 billion), according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.
In 2021, the trend continued, with total trade in goods between China and the EU reaching 695.5 billion euros (about US$777 billion), compared with 631.4 billion euros (US$704 billion) in trade between the US and the EU.
According to Eurostat, China was the top source of EU imports and the third largest destination of EU exports after the United States and the United Kingdom.
Europe’s trade with the world’s second largest economy has skyrocketed over the past decade. China recorded some of the highest annual growth rates for both EU imports and exports from 2011 to 2021, Eurostat said in a Services and Foreign Investment report. China is second in this regard, followed by the UK and Switzerland.
Who trades what
Cars, machinery and telecommunications equipment are among the most traded goods between Europe and China.
For Europe, cars and vehicle components are by far the hottest export items, but airplanes and electrical appliances are also popular.
Baby carriages, data processing machines, furniture and other household items are now among China’s best sellers in Europe. Many products flow into the Netherlands, where Europe’s largest port is located in Rotterdam.
The region’s largest exporters to China are Germany – which alone accounts for 104.7 billion euros ($116.5 billion) of goods shipped to China – followed by France and the Netherlands.
For now, however, tensions are high above a certain, much smaller EU country: Lithuania.
In January, the European Union launched a case against China at the World Trade Organization, accusing Beijing of “discriminatory trade practices” against the Baltic state. In a statement, the European Commission said China had begun “severely restricting or de facto blocking imports from and exports to Lithuania or links with Lithuania” after allowing self-governing Taiwan to have a de facto embassy under its own name to open in Vilnius.
The move angry the communist leadership in Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory even though it has never ruled it.
When asked about the matter at the time, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters that “China has followed WTO rules.”
“The problem between China and Lithuania is a political one, not an economic one,” he said.
Janka Oertel, director of the Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the case is likely to have EU leaders high on Friday’s list.
“Brussels must send a strong signal of unity to ward off further attacks – implicit or explicit -” she said.
There is also little hope for a revival of a planned investment agreement between China and the EU, which was previously shelved due to Beijing’s sanctions on members of the European Parliament over their stance on Xinjiang.
Given the current plethora of issues, this is “a non-starter” for now, analysts at Eurasia Group said.
– CNN Beijing Bureau, Irene Nasser, Julia Horowitz, James Frater, Martin Goillandeau and Luke McGee contributed to this report.