Beijing Daily Client | Reporter Wu Na
A few days ago, the three multilateral summits at the Southeast Asian countries closed one after another. As the largest and highest-level diplomatic activity offline in the past three years since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the bilateral and multilateral interactions between leaders of various countries have become the focus. Among them, the meeting between the Chinese and US heads of the Chinese and US leaders during the G20 summit was seen as "the direction of the rudder of the Sino-US relations in the new era."
This is the exit of Nguralai International Airport, Bali, Indonesia, taken on November 9, 2022. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Xu Qin
During the summit, leaders of various countries looked forward to meeting and exchanges with President Xi Jinping. In addition to the United States, Chinese leaders also met with leaders of European countries such as French President Macron , Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez, Dutch Prime Minister Rutte and Italian Prime Minister Meloni. China and Europe have conducted in-depth exchanges on key issues with global impacts such as economy and trade, energy, climate change, and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Some US media said, "Chinese leaders have whirlwinds of diplomacy. Western countries, led by the United States, have the willingness to restart communication channels with China." Ding Chun, director of the Center for European Studies at Fudan University, pointed out that European countries have successively sent signals of active dialogue with China. From a realistic perspective, Europe is currently facing problems such as slow economic recovery or even stagnation, serious inflation in , and geopolitical triggering energy and food crises; In the long run, China is the world's second largest economy and has an important influence in world economy, international relations, global governance and so on. "Europe generally realizes that many things cannot be done without China." Wang Yong, director of the Center for International Political and Economic Research at Peking University, believes that after the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the world has fallen into chaos in political, economic and security, and the world is in greater danger. "China's position in world affairs is becoming more and more important. The trend of European policy towards China is changing, but there are also two forces pulling." He further explained, "On the one hand, the United States has a greater impact on European policy, and on the other hand, Europe also realizes that binding with the United States will affect China's constructive role in European peace."
At the same time, the two experts pointed out that this round of multilateral summit gathered most important economies in the world. Face-to-face communication is more conducive to each other's bottom line and clear their willingness to cooperate than video meetings or air-to-air calls.
"After the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China has formulated new development directions, including firmly promoting high-level opening up to the outside world, adhering to economic globalization, and promoting the construction of an open world economy. It has great attraction to the world and is even more important encouragement to Europe." Wang Yong said that China's maintaining stable development, coupled with the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, has made China's development prospects very optimistic. "Under this situation, Western countries have started diplomatic relations with China. They hope to improve relations with China and promote interests in China." Data from the General Administration of Customs of China shows that in the first 10 months of this year, EU continued to be my country's second largest trading partner , with a total trade value with the EU of 4.68 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.1%. Among them, the growth rate of imports and exports with Germany remained at 2%, and the export growth rate was 8.3%; the growth rate of trade with , the Netherlands, and the growth rate of exports was 23.8%; the growth rate of trade with Italy expanded by 11.1%, and the export increased by 25.1%. It is worth noting that Germany is still my country's largest trading partner in the EU, and its trade with Germany accounts for 26.9% of China's total trade with the EU.
At the same time, the vigorous development of China-Europe freight trains also demonstrates the spirit of mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Europe. Up to now, the China-Europe freight train has launched 82 routes, reaching 204 cities in 24 European countries, with a total cargo value of over US$290 billion. China-Europe freight trains continue to play an important role in stabilizing the global supply chain and alleviating global inflationary pressures.
"There has been a kind of economic and trade relationship between China and Europe, and I have interdependent on you." Wang Yong said that despite the influence of adverse factors such as the epidemic and geopolitics, China-EU trade still shows strong resilience and vitality.
At the beginning of this month, as the "locomotive" of the European economy, German Chancellor Scholz became the first European leader to visit China after the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The two sides reached a consensus on continuing to carry out "pragmatic cooperation". Ding Chun said that "opposing decoupling" has always been the mainstream voice within Europe, and Scholz's visit to China responded to the interests of both sides of "pragmatic and rational, win-win cooperation". "We must allow the other party to have different ideology , social system and development stages, but it should not be a real obstacle to bilateral exchanges and cooperation."
Wang Yong pointed out that while seeing the adjustment of the European policy toward China, we must also see that the adverse factors still exist. For example, the United States regards China as its largest strategic competitor, and China-Europe economic and trade development is also restricted by "ideological standards", including China's investment in Europe.
"Nevertheless, I think the current and future China-EU relations still have potential for development. In addition to the economic and trade fields, China and Europe have broader consensus and common interests in climate change, reform of the global governance system, green development , digital transformation, etc.," Wang Yong said that on the issue of global security development, the two sides should have dialogue without restrictions. "I believe that China and Europe will definitely have a more positive development based on the common interests and on the basis of understanding each other more objectively."
