Dialogue and cooperation represent rational path to healthy China-EU trade relationship: China Daily editorial

European Union trade chief Maros Sefcovic departed for China on Wednesday to meet with China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Beijing to address differences in bilateral trade and investment.

Unfortunately, some EU member states appear to believe that the right way to negotiate is to come with a stopwatch, a list of restrictions and the threat of more to come.

That is not conducive to finding common ground. China's Ministry of Commerce offered a pointed response on Tuesday to reports that France and Germany had urged the EU to make greater use of "trade defense" measures and roll out a number of new protectionist tools.

China has always maintained that interdependence is not a risk, intertwined interests do not pose a threat, and open cooperation represents the right path to development, a spokesman for the ministry stressed.

France and Germany should note that encouraging Brussels to erect more barriers will not solve the EU's competitiveness problems. The EU's trade concerns are caused by multiple factors, none of which is China's fault.

The EU wants to "rebalance" trade by selling more to China, yet it has imposed restrictions on exports of products that China wants to buy, including the sophisticated machinery, components and technologies in which European companies remain competitive.

Nor should the EU ignore the fact that it is not easy to replace China as a supplier. EU manufacturers have spent decades building supply chains that are closely related to Chinese production capacity, logistics, processing networks and its increasingly innovative industrial ecosystems. China's exports to the EU are no longer simply containers of cheap consumer goods. Electronics, machinery, batteries, vehicles, components and other intermediate products are deeply embedded in European production. These products lower the costs of final products for EU consumers and help the EU pursue its green transition.

Some EU officials have baselessly pointed to the so-called "subsidies", "exchange rates", "overcapacity" and "dumping". These politicized talking points have proved to be cliches designed to vent internal EU pressure — and they do not address the structural dynamics of China-EU trade.

China has been upgrading its manufacturing and climbing the technological ladder while the EU is grappling with deindustrialization, high energy costs and an expensive regulatory environment. The fact that two major economies are going through these two processes respectively does not mean there is a causal relationship between them, still less a zero-sum game.

The belief among some EU politicians that resolving China-EU trade issues will help cure the EU's systemic economic problems is wishful thinking. Any major economy facing a structural challenge should primarily look for its causes at home. This is why the October deadline unilaterally imposed by Brussels is more a pressure tactic than a good strategy. Threatening restrictions while demanding so-called "voluntary" concessions will only make the negotiations harder.

There is already a better framework. At the inaugural China-EU trade and investment consultation in Brussels in June, the two sides agreed to work through four areas: trade and investment balancing, export controls, intellectual property rights and reform of the World Trade Organization. They also agreed that increased market access measures and initiatives can contribute to the balancing of the trade relationship.

The Beijing consultations should build on that foundation rather than turn into another exercise in deadline diplomacy. If the EU wants more exports to China, it should examine why its products are less competitive and lift its high-tech export restrictions. An ever-lengthening list of restrictions on Chinese entities is not the way to "rebalance" the economic and trade relationship.

France and Germany should therefore be careful what they wish for. Protectionism cannot enhance competitiveness, whereas "decoupling" and cutting off supply chains will only harm others without benefiting oneself.

The choice before Sefcovic is consequently whether the EU treats interdependence as a problem to be dismantled, or as an economic asset to be managed responsibly. The first path promises walls, higher costs and a prolonged quarrel. The second requires respect, patience and reciprocity.

For two of the world's major economies, that should not be a difficult choice.