Two days before Chinese Premier Li Keqiang boarded the flight from Beijing for Brussels to attend Tuesday’s annual summit with European Union leaders, his team of diplomats was desperate.
They were struggling to get their EU counterparts back to the table to agree on a joint statement to be released at the end of the meeting between Li and the two EU leaders: European Commission President Jean - Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk.
The two sides were able to draft a joint statement at the last minute, but not before European negotiators initially threatened to walk out from the discussions about it without knowing what reforms and, crucially, what timetables for their implementation Li would present.
The rare show of EU hostility, diplomats said, reflected its impatience with China’s lack of solid promises or follow - through on when and how it would deliver the market reforms the EU had been waiting for years to see.
The EU representatives also showed signs of being emboldened by the behaviour of US President Donald Trump and his team in pressuring China to secure better trading terms, according to analysts.
A more - assertive - than - before Europe began to show its face weeks before the summit.
Once an advocate for closer ties with China, the EU published “EU - China: A Strategic Outlook” on March 12, unprecedentedly slamming Beijing as a “systemic rival” along with 10 proposals for dealing with Beijing.
The report was out just ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s European tour, which China hoped would be highlighted by Italy’s decision to join Xi’s signature “Belt and Road Initiative”, the first Group of Seven nation to do so.
While that was achieved, China got a dressing - down from the leader of the other country Xi was visiting: the French President Emmanuel Macron.
“The period of European naivety is over” when it came to how to handle China, Macron said just a few days before hosting Xi in the Elysee Palace for a state visit.
In a sign that Berlin is also strongly influencing the EU strategy, Germany’s main business lobby, the BDI, has also recently started describing Beijing as a “systemic competitor”.
“The east wind has been blowing quite strongly, and more recently, it’s been smelling a bit foul too. Now we need a stronger west wind. This is what you will hear all around Europe these days, ” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a member of the European Parliament who serves as a deputy chair of the European Parliament delegation for relations with China.
The Chinese delegation to the EU, meanwhile, tried to fight back. Zhang Ming, the ambassador representing the mission, said in an interview with Politico that he disagreed with the label of “systemic rival” the EU had adopted, saying: “In Chinese culture, rivals are bound to seek superiority over the other side. ”.
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