ZAGREB — On the day EU leaders told the European Commission to build a toolbox of new trade defences aimed at Chinese competition, China’s foreign minister was in an EU capital, collecting a head of state’s agreement with Beijing’s side of the dispute.
Wang Yi met Croatian President Zoran Milanović on Friday and held talks with Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman, according to Xinhua. It followed his meeting with Aliyev in Baku, and the foreign ministry’s announcement has him continuing to Montenegro and Bulgaria.
On trade, Xinhua’s account has Wang telling Milanović that China’s surplus reflects market demand and the international division of labor, and that China and the EU are “partners, not adversaries.” Milanović, it says, replied that he shares China’s position and that Chinese competitiveness comes mainly from an efficient system of organizing production.
A president is not the table where tariffs are decided. Croatia’s government, led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, sits at the European Council, while Milanović has taken his own line before; in July he rejected a Western troop plan for Ukraine. The Croatian presidency’s own account of Friday’s meeting says only that EU-China relations were discussed, with emphasis on trade, and gives no positions. The sentence Beijing attributes to him therefore rests on what Xinhua reported.
In Brussels, Euronews reported, leaders asked for safeguards with quotas and tariffs to protect chemicals and machinery, and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said work on such a tool would begin. Whether it is ready by year’s end is unclear. Euronews put the bloc’s trade deficit with China at about 360 billion euros, a Brussels figure. Chinese customs data count gross trade instead: 4.78 trillion yuan with the EU over nine months, up 8.4%, with no matching balance in the summaries TEH read.
Beijing answered the summit the same day. A Ministry of Commerce spokesperson, CGTN reported, urged the EU to show sincerity in solving problems, called the claim that pressure had produced results “entirely groundless” and warned against underestimating China’s determination to protect its interests.
Xinhua says only that cooperation will advance across various fields, and Croatia’s presidency lists no project, sum or date either.
Wang heads next to Montenegro, whose EU accession timetable lost its year-end deadline after Plenković pressed eight demands at that same summit. What neither side has said is whether Zagreb’s government shares the view Milanović is credited with in Beijing’s account, or would say so at the Council table.
