China’s stance on Ukraine war is critical to good relations with EU, bloc’s foreign policy chief says

“The war in Ukraine is not only affecting Ukraine. It is affecting the security of the Europeans. And it is sending shock waves around the world,” Borrell said.

“And I asked China to use its influence in order to make Russia go back to the [Black Sea] grain initiative, in order to make Ukrainian grain to be able to be exported to the rest of the world. Otherwise, we will face another food crisis.”

Earlier this year, Moscow refused to renew the deal mediated by Turkey and the United Nations to allow food exports to leave Ukrainian ports.

China must address trade gap with Europe or face more protectionism, Borrell says

In a speech at Peking University on Friday, Borrell warned that trust had been “eroded” partly because of China’s “ambivalent position with regard to both Ukraine and Russia”.

He said: “We do consider it essential that China makes a major effort to convince the people of Ukraine that China is not Russia’s ally in this war.”

He called on Beijing to step up its humanitarian aid to Kyiv and said that the move would improve China’s image in Europe.

Later, in a joint press conference with Wang on Friday, he said he had asked China “to use its influence on Russia to stop this war of aggression”.

On Saturday Borrell said decoupling with China was impossible – a position Brussels has repeatedly stated.

However, he warned earlier during his visit that the bloc’s trade deficit with China was not a result of a simple difference in productivity and pointed to structural reasons such as the persistent difficulties experienced by European companies in gaining access to Chinese markets.

China’s surplus with the EU narrowed by 19.6 per cent from a year ago in the first three quarters of 2023 but this was mainly driven by a 10.6 per cent fall in exports from China, according to Chinese customs data.

The war in Ukraine is not only affecting Ukraine. It is affecting the security of the Europeans.

“If the public concludes that the trade imbalance with China is so great as to endanger key sectors, or place our transition towards climate neutrality at risk, it will demand more drastic protectionist measures,” Borrell warned on Friday.

Enrique Mora, the EU’s deputy secretary general for political affairs, will visit Beijing next week to continue the dialogue on outstanding regional issues, he added.

Borrell also told Wang that the EU is committed to managing relations with China in a constructive and responsible manner, expecting Beijing to take Brussels more seriously.

“Europe takes China very, very seriously, and we also expect to be considered not through the lens of our relations with others, but in ourselves,” he said on Saturday.

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Wang had said the previous day that China-EU relations would not be disturbed by a third party.

“There is no fundamental conflict of interest between China and Europe, which are first and foremost partners and where consensus far outweighs differences,” he told the joint press conference.

Borrell also met Vice-President Han Zheng on Friday and members of the Shanghai Institutes For International Studies, a think tank linked to the foreign ministry, on Thursday.