In the European Union (EU) we have seen a growing imbalance.

That imbalance has doubled in the last two years,’ said the official, who declared her preference for negotiated solutions.

The next meeting in Beijing between representatives of the two parties will be “the summit of options” to address the imbalance; ‘for every three containers that arrive from China to the European space, two of them return empty’, she said.

It is in both our interests, she said, that we have sustainable trade between the European Union and China; it is also in China’s interest that the trade relationship is sustainable and European leaders, she added, will not tolerate an imbalance in the trade relationship over time.

In Von der Leyen’s view, Chinese electric cars are an example of overcapacity’ in the European single market, especially in terms of subsidies.

Over the past decades, China has ‘systematically reduced its dependence on the world’, while the world’s dependence on China has increased, the German expert acknowledged.

Currently ‘we see a slowdown of growth in China, therefore a less strong demand, but we still see overcapacity in production in terms of subsidies and therefore overcapacity in the global market, in Chinese products’, she said.

Trade between the EU and the Asian country doubled in the last two years to almost 400 billion euros already, she specified.

ef/abo/mgt/mjm