EU tells China ties have ‘reached inflection point' at tense Beijing summit
'The current challenges facing Europe do not come from China,' state news agency Xinhua quoted the Chinese leader telling European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Antonio Costa on Thursday.
The summit marks 50 years of the establishment of EU-China ties.
Expectations are muted as the summit is being held under the shadow of growing trade tensions and hawkish EU rhetoric towards Beijing.
Ms von der Leyen earlier this month accused China of using its manufacturing overcapacity to flood global markets and of 'enabling Russia's war economy'.
The two sides differ significantly on the Ukraine war as China backs Russia's position on the conflict while the EU provides military, economic and diplomatic support to Kyiv.
In addition to Mr Xi, Ms von der Leyen and Mr Costa are expected to meet premier Li Qiang, the Chinese foreign ministry said.
Mr Xi urged the EU officials at the summit to "adhere to open cooperation and properly handle differences and frictions" after Ms von der Leyen warned that the bloc's ties with China were at an 'inflection point' and called for a rebalancing of trade ties with the world's second largest economy.
'Improving competitiveness can't rely on 'building walls and fortresses'. 'Decoupling and breaking chains' will only result in isolation,' Mr Xi added, according to Xinhua.
He also urged the European leaders to "make correct strategic choices" in a veiled criticism of their recent hawkish stances on China.
'It is hoped the European side will keep the trade and investment market open and refrain from using restrictive economic and trade tools," he said, reiterating China's position on global trade in the wake of America's imposition of sweeping tariffs on almost all major countries.
The EU delegation was expected to bring up the subject of electric vehicles and Beijing's export controls on rare earths. The controls temporarily stopped European automotive production lines when they were first announced in May in response to the US tariffs.
The EU, meanwhile, has targeted Chinese exports of electric vehicles, among other goods, over the last year and its officials have repeatedly complained about Chinese industrial overcapacity.
'As our cooperation has deepened, so have imbalances,' Ms von der Leyen told the Chinese president during the meeting in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
'We have reached an inflection point,' she added, asking China to 'come forward with real solutions'.
The EU's trade deficit with China surged to a historic high of £265bn last year.
In spite of their differences, Beijing and Brussels agreed on a joint statement on climate, an area of mutual cooperation.
They agreed to strengthen climate action, signalling renewed cooperation between two of the world's largest polluters at a time of rising global tensions and waning US leadership. They committed to submit new 2035 climate targets, scale up renewable energy, and deepen cooperation on methane, adaptation and green technology ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil.
'This joint statement sends an important signal that climate cooperation can still rise above geopolitical tensions,' said David Waskow, international climate director at the World Resources Institute.
'Stronger leadership from these two major emitters is critically needed to rekindle global momentum after the US stepped away from the Paris Agreement again.'
Climate advocates said the pledge could help stabilise the multilateral process but warned that concrete ambition was still lacking.
'The EU–China statement sends a timely message,' Andreas Seiber of 350.org told The Independent. 'But the level of ambition remains far too low… aligning with the 1.5C limit requires urgent, credible action, especially with COP30 fast approaching.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
28 minutes ago
- BBC News
Ukraine war: Twisted wreckage shows sanctions haven't yet stopped Russia
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western nations have imposed far-reaching sanctions on the aggressor, in a bid to stymy its war on the ground here in Ukraine, these sanctions seem to have limited outside Kharkiv, at a secret location, lies a collection of twisted metal remnants from attacks in and around the city. It's a scrapyard of savagery - the remains of many of the Russian bombs, rockets, missiles and drones used to hit in and around Kharkiv over the past three and a half years."This is the material evidence with which we, as prosecutors, will prove the guilt of Russia in committing war crimes," Dymtro Chubenko of the Kharkiv Region Prosecutor's Office tells me. Every piece of rocket and drone here has been carefully collected and shows me one of the latest editions – a Russian version of Iran's Shaheed drone. Russia has recently been firing hundreds of these Kamikaze drones at Ukraine's towns and cities. They're relatively cheap to make, he tells me – about $20,000 (£15,000) points to the nearby carcass of a Russian cruise missile. He says these cost these weapons are not fully Russian-made - they contain "many components from western nations," Dmytro says. "It's possible [for Russia] to circumvent sanctions, but doing nothing is not an option either," he adds. Donald Trump appears to have lost patience with President Vladimir Putin. After early efforts at rapprochement between the US and Russia, the US president has now threatened to boost sanctions on the Kremlin unless Russia agrees to a ceasefire in Ukraine by this Friday. Trump has said secondary sanctions will also come into force that day, affecting any country trading with Russia. He has already imposed an additional 25% tariff on India for buying Russian oil. US envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in Moscow on Wednesday for talks ahead of the looming if President Trump chooses to impose more sanctions on the Kremlin, would it be enough to force Russia to change course in this war? Dymtro believes hitting Russian oil and gas exports could have a significant economic impact."We will not be able to stop it with a snap of our fingers, but we need to do it, we need to act," he says. There is hope that President Trump might just 30 kilometres from the Russian border, has borne the brunt of many strikes throughout the war. Thousands of buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Throughout the region almost 3,000 civilians have been killed, 97 of them Colonel Serhii Bolvinov shows me the burnt-out shell of the police headquarters he used to work in. A Russian strike in 2022 killed three of his officers as well as six civilians. He points to the gaping hole in the wall where the missiles entered. Russian tactics, he says, haven't changed. "Russia tries to hit and kill as many civilians as they can." Colonel Bolvinov's job is to investigate every single civilian death. He's leaving no stone unturned. He has 1,000 men and women working for him, now dispersed in basement offices right across the city. They're carrying out painstaking forensic work to build a criminal case against those responsible. Photographs of Russian military officers who've been tied to specific attacks are plastered across the wall – the another building, crime scene investigators carry out DNA tests to identify the latest casualties – Ukrainian civilians killed in a Russian rocket attack as they queued up to collect water. Colonel Bolvinov shows me footage from strike - unrecognisable charred bodies lie on the ground."It's hard to do this work, but it's very important work for future justice for us, for the Ukrainian people," he says. He shows me a three-dimensional computer image of a mass grave in Izium where more than 400 bodies were discovered. "Some of the cases leave a scar on all of us, and we will never forget this trauma," he Bolvinov says he wants to see an end to this war. He hopes President Trump's increasing pressure on President Putin will work. But the police chief doesn't want peace at any price. "Peace without justice, is not really peace," he says. Even if a ceasefire can be agreed, it still won't address the wounds of most Ukrainian people. At a cemetery outside Kharkiv is another reminder of the cost of the war: the ever-growing ranks of dead Ukrainian soldiers. Each grave is marked by the blue and gold of the national flag. The silence here is only broken by the sound of them flapping in the in the civilian section of the cemetery, a mother and her family are placing flowers on their daughter's grave. Sofia was just 14 years old when a Russian glide bomb took her life last year. She was sitting on a park bench in Kharkiv, enjoying the warm summer afternoon with a friend.I ask her mother Yulia if President Trump's increasing pressure on Russia can bring any comfort, but she's not optimistic."These conversations have already been going on too long," she tells me."But so far there are no results… Hope is fading."
BreakingNews.ie
28 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Trump could meet Putin as soon as next week, White House official says
US President Donald Trump could meet in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as next week as he seeks to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, a White House official said. The official cautioned that a meeting has not been scheduled yet and no location has been determined. The official was not authorised to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans. Advertisement The White House said Mr Trump was also open to a meeting with both Mr Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A meeting between Mr Putin and Mr Trump would be their first since Mr Trump returned to office this year. Russian President Vladimir Putin and US special envoy Steve Witkoff shake hands during their meeting in Moscow on Wednesday (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) It would be a significant milestone in the three-year-old war, though there is no promise such a meeting would lead to the end of the fighting since Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on their demands. News of a potential meeting with Mr Putin, which was first reported by The New York Times, came hours after Mr Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff met Mr Putin in Moscow. Mr Trump had posted earlier on Truth Social that Mr Witkoff 'had a highly productive meeting' with Mr Putin in which 'great progress was made'. Advertisement It was not immediately clear if Mr Putin or Mr Zelensky had agreed to any meetings with Mr Trump. Mr Zelensky has been willing to meet face-to-face with Mr Putin to end the conflict, but Russia has repeatedly rejected the idea. Mr Trump has met Mr Zelensky several times this year, including a contentious February meeting in Washington. Though he has not yet met Mr Putin this year, Mr Trump met with him five times during his first term. Mr Trump said earlier on Wednesday that he updated America's allies in Europe and that they will work toward an end to the Russia-Ukraine war 'in the days and weeks to come'. Advertisement White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: 'The Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the President is open to meeting with both President Putin and President Zelensky.' Her statement did not address the potential timing of any meeting. Mr Witkoff met Mr Putin days before the White House's deadline for Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or potentially face severe economic penalties that could also hit countries buying its oil. The meeting between Mr Putin and Mr Witkoff lasted about three hours, the Kremlin said. Advertisement Mr Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said Mr Putin and Mr Witkoff had a 'useful and constructive conversation' that focused on the Ukrainian crisis and, in a nod toward improving relations between Washington and Moscow, 'prospects for possible development of strategic co-operation' between the United States and Russia.
Daily Mail
28 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Pension deals boost profits at Legal & General as employers look to offload defined benefit schemes
Britain's biggest money manager Legal & General saw profits jump as it cashed in on a boom in buyouts of UK pension funds. The buyouts, which are also known as pension risk transfers (PRTs), are when businesses pay financial firms to take over the running of legacy pension schemes. It is one of L&G's most lucrative divisions, with the FTSE 100 firm landing £3.4billion worth of PRT deals in the first six months of the year, up from £1.5billion in 2024. It helped the group, which manages over £1 trillion in assets, make a profit of £859million for the period, 6 per cent higher than last year. L&G boss Antonio Simoes said it planned to expand further into PRT, saying it was eyeing £42billion worth of deals. Employers are keen to offload defined benefit pension schemes, most of them long closed to current employees but which still incur costs. The surge in PRT deals also comes despite Chancellor Rachel Reeves introducing measures to try to encourage employers to keep running defined benefit schemes in the hope they will invest in areas that boost the UK economy. So lucrative is the pension transfer market it has attracted new rivals to L&G. In July, Athora, a European insurer owned by US private equity giant Apollo Global, snapped up Pension Insurance Corp, one of the UK's biggest players in PRT, for £5.7billion. And last week Canadian outfit Brookfield swooped on LSE-listed retirement saving specialist Just Group with a £2.4billion bid. But Simoes said L&G was 'firmly on track' to hit targets and reiterated plans to hand £5billion to its shareholders over three years. The shares dropped 2 per cent, or 5.3p, to 256.2p as analysts were disappointed that its solvency ratio, a key measure of financial strength, had dropped to 217 per cent from 223 per cent. L&G's push into the pensions market comes after Simoes warned Britons were not saving enough for retirement and called on the Government to lower the age of auto-enrolment in workplace schemes to 18, from 22. 'We really need to tackle how much we as individuals and employers are contributing,' he told the Daily Mail. Last month, the Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, announced a review of the state pension age alongside a wider probe into retirement savings.
