Uneasy summit on arms and trade

“Summit of insignificance”, headlinesHandelsblatt after the EU-China summit on 20 September in Brussels. The meeting of delegates representing the world’s first and third largest economy should be important but will end without any significant result, the Düsseldorf daily notes. After 15 years of arguments over the same questions — the first summit was held in 1998 — China feels increasingly sour about “the EU’s complete inability to act. Van Rompuy simply has nothing to say.”

One of these sticking points is the EU arms ban, imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The EUobserver reports that in his opening remarks to EU presidents Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, Wen Jiabao bluntly told the EU to drop it —

I have to be frank with you in saying this - on the issue of lifting the arms embargo on China and recognising China's full market economy status. We have been working hard for 10 years [on this] but the solution has been elusive. I deeply regret this. I hope and I do believe that the EU side will seize the opportunity and take the right initiative at an early stage to resolve these issue.

The Brussels news-site notes, however, that the ban has been flouted in practice —

EU countries granted export licences for almost €218 million of defence equipment to China in 2010. According to EU documents, the lion's share came from France and the UK for aircraft and ground vehicle parts, electronic equipment, missiles and over €13 million of: "Chemical or biological toxic agents, 'riot control agents,' radioactive materials."

China Daily reports that Premier Wen is pushing for an EU investment treaty that ensure “favorable legal and policy investment environments for enterprises.” With Europe experiencing economic troubles, the state controlled newspaper notes —

The EU is China's top trading partner, while China is the bloc's second-largest trading partner and the largest source of imports. Trade reached $567.2 billion (€435.5bn) in 2011 and Europe also saw an annual increase of Chinese investment last year of 94.5 percent, to $4.46 billion (€3.42bn). However, business ties are also suffering from the European debt crisis, with China's exports to Europe falling 12.7 percent in August from a year earlier, for the third month in a row.

Handelsblatt points out however that Beijing is knocking on other doors while in Europe, first of which is Germany’s, with Berlin one of its biggest investors and one ready to share technological secrets —

In Beijing diplomatic circles you can hear that the Chinese leadership would rather the Germans were in charge of the EU. Therefore, distrust of the 26 other member states is growing: is Germany wrangling for advantages in its relations with China, paying less attention to human rights and, in return, investing all the more?