After tense talks in Beijing and a bruising trade blow from Washington, EU bureaucrats are heading into their August break weary and short of wins, as doubts deepen over the bloc’s global leverage.
But on some of their longest-standing complaints, the Europeans found that Beijing would not budge and was keen to display the confidence and swagger that European officials say has been on show since it forced a climbdown on US tariffs three months ago, according to sources familiar with proceedings.
Over more than three hours of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Europeans pushed him again to rein in his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, only for Xi to point to US President Donald Trump’s failure to deliver on a pre-election pledge to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours as evidence of how little leverage anyone has over the conflict.
A repeated motif of the Europeans’ face-to-face engagement with Xi is the Chinese leader telling them that he has less leverage over Putin – whom he often describes as a “good friend” – than they think. But whereas in previous years the EU complained that Xi had batted their assertions about China’s support for Russia away, this time there was an in-depth debate.
