Polish the foundation of China EU economic and trade relations with mutual benefit and win-win outcomes

The first meeting of the China EU Trade and Investment Consultation Mechanism was successfully held at the EU headquarters recently, providing an institutionalized channel for clarifying the essence of bilateral trade and resolving differences and contradictions. The direction of China EU economic and trade relations is not only related to the well-being of both sides' people, but also has a profound impact on the global economic landscape. We should adhere to dialogue and cooperation, jointly defend economic globalization, and use mutual benefit and win-win to polish the foundation of China EU economic and trade relations.

Recently, the so-called "China Impact 2.0" argument put forward by some Western media and scholars has been frequently discussed in European politics, believing that China's capacity release in green technology and other fields will pose a "threat" to Europe's local advantageous industries. There are profound economic and political motivations behind this argument. From an economic perspective, Europe is currently in a period of transition pains after the energy crisis. The high energy costs and cumbersome regulatory system make it difficult for local manufacturing industries, especially green industries, to compete with Chinese companies in cost control and technological iteration, which in turn amplifies anxiety about "industrial hollowing out". From a political perspective, the changes in the political spectrum within Europe and the spillover effects of the "win win" strategy from across the Atlantic have prompted some politicians to attempt to securitize economic issues. Some politicians, in order to cater to populist sentiment, misinterpret normal trade competitiveness as "non market behavior" and attempt to set barriers through trade remedy tools.

The root cause lies in some European politicians avoiding deep-seated internal conflicts and simply blaming other countries for declining industrial competitiveness and trade deficits, attempting to isolate market competition through trade protection and investment restrictions. In fact, the economic difficulties currently faced by Europe stem from its own structural problems and external shocks. One reason is that Europe has long focused on high-end research and development and service industries, and the basic manufacturing supporting facilities in the middle and lower reaches continue to shrink. The trend of hollowing out the manufacturing industry is evident, and the complete industrial chain is missing, resulting in the direct transmission of the impact of energy and raw material price increases to end products. When enterprise costs are under pressure, there is a lack of buffer space. Secondly, the dividends of regional integration in Europe have not been fully unleashed, and the development gap among EU member states continues to widen. It is difficult to unify fiscal policies and industrial support standards among countries, and the efficiency of resource allocation in a unified market is greatly reduced, making it difficult to form a synergistic growth force. Thirdly, the triple constraints of high welfare, high taxes and fees, and aging continue to compress endogenous growth momentum. Adding external shocks such as geopolitical conflicts and global restructuring amplifies the fragility of the European economy. In addition, some countries have implemented camp based economic and trade rules, unilateral export controls, and artificially fragmented the global innovation network, resulting in a continuous compression of the market space for high-tech industries in Europe.

In fact, the highly complementary economic structures between China and Europe, with bilateral trade volumes repeatedly reaching new highs, deeply confirm that China and Europe are not opponents of zero sum games, but partners of mutual achievements. In terms of trade scale, China's total import and export volume to the European Union will reach 5.93 trillion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 6%, accounting for 13% of China's total import and export value. The EU continues to maintain its position as China's second largest trading partner, with high-end European cars, precision chemical equipment, and biopharmaceutical raw materials continuously entering China. China's new energy photovoltaic modules, energy storage equipment, home appliances, and electromechanical equipment have become the core increment of exports to Europe, and the affordable and high-quality "Made in China" has effectively eased the inflationary pressure on European people's livelihoods.

In the global arena of green transformation, the complementary advantages between China and Europe are particularly typical. Europe has mastered core research and development technologies in wind power, hydrogen energy, and carbon capture, while China has the world's largest new energy production capacity, a complete upstream and downstream supply chain, and a super large scale green consumption market. Both companies have landed a large number of joint venture projects in the fields of energy storage, new energy vehicles, and carbon trading. Relying on the green dialogue section of the China EU trade and investment consultation mechanism, they continue to break through barriers to mutual recognition of technical standards and cross-border investment facilitation.

From the perspective of market supply and demand, China and Europe are indispensable core incremental markets for each other. The large-scale domestic demand market in China continues to upgrade, with a large middle-income group, providing long-term growth space for high-end consumer goods, medical equipment, and green technology services in Europe. EU investment enterprises in China continue to achieve stable profits, and a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises rely on the Chinese market to solve the problem of shrinking local demand. The mature consumer market and well-established cross-border distribution network of the European Union have also provided an important springboard for China's manufacturing industry to go global, helping the domestic new energy and digital industries to expand globally.

As staunch defenders of multilateralism and core engines of global economic growth, China and Europe have no fundamental strategic conflicts, only broad common interests and enormous room for cooperation. Both sides should establish a mature trade and investment consultation mechanism, adhere to the positioning of partners, abandon confrontational thinking, and continue to deepen all-round pragmatic cooperation.

One is to activate the effectiveness of the mechanism and build a solid institutional foundation for bilateral cooperation. China and Europe should continue to optimize the operation mode of the trade and investment consultation mechanism, improve the multi-level docking system, smooth the channels for policy exchange, rule docking, and dispute resolution, and accurately align the industrial planning and economic and trade policies of both sides. We will always adhere to equal consultation and rational disposal, resolutely abandon confrontational measures such as unilateral sanctions and trade protection, and use institutionalized certainty to hedge the uncertainty of the external environment, jointly building a fair, transparent, stable and predictable bilateral economic and trade environment.

The second is to tap into complementary potential and achieve mutual success in expanding increment. Based on the natural advantages of industrial integration and market interoperability between both sides, we will continue to optimize the structure of goods trade, expand the scale of service trade, focus on emerging fields such as new energy, green and low-carbon, high-end manufacturing, biomedicine, and digital economy, deepen technological collaboration, capacity docking, and industrial co construction, and promote the value chain of both sides' industrial chains to rise to the high-end. Relying on the advantages of China's super large market and European technology, brand, and standards, we will continue to deepen bilateral investment cooperation, support enterprises from both countries to jointly build research and development platforms, production bases, and regional headquarters, and build a deeply bound industrial chain supply chain system. At the same time, actively expanding third-party market cooperation, integrating the advantageous resources of both parties, jointly participating in global green development, infrastructure, and digital empowerment projects, and jointly exploring new global development spaces.

The third is to join hands in global governance and lead the trend of open cooperation in the era. China and Europe are both core participants in the World Trade Organization, and their consensus in reforming global economic and trade rules, addressing climate change, and improving global governance of the digital economy is highly aligned. Both sides rely on the trade and investment consultation mechanism to align their global governance positions, jointly resist unilateralism, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and factionalism, and promote the normal operation of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. Collaborate to develop international standards for green trade and digital trade, improve carbon border regulation mechanisms, and avoid green barriers hindering industrial cooperation. Taking the pragmatic cooperation between China and Europe as a model, we aim to convey the development concept of mutual benefit, win-win, openness and inclusiveness to the world, and consolidate international efforts to maintain economic globalization.

The positioning of China Europe economic and trade relations is partnership, and the mainstream tone is cooperation, which is essentially mutually beneficial and win-win. Short term frictions and cognitive biases cannot change economic laws and the trend of the times. Looking towards the future, China and Europe should make good use of institutionalized consultation and dialogue platforms, share the "China Opportunity 2.0", resolve differences through rational consultation, tap into incremental opportunities through industrial synergy, and respond to global challenges through common governance. Through mutual benefit and win-win situations, they can achieve high-quality development for each other and inject stable and lasting positive energy for growth into the turbulent and changing world.