China said Tuesday it has never deliberately sought a trade surplus with the EU.
The surplus is a natural result under the combined influence of different industrial structures, specialization, ways of trade and external factors, noted an unnamed spokesperson at the Foreign Ministry in a statement.
This came in response to an inquiry whether Brussels will press Beijing to reduce barriers to European exports at a high-level meeting in September.
European Commission Executive Vice President and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said in an interview that “the China-EU trading relationship is very unbalanced. China is running a huge trade surplus, and the level of openness from the Chinese side is not the same as the level of openness from the EU side.” For years, the majority of EU companies in China have gained huge benefits from bilateral trade, which is the fundamental reason why these companies have chosen to operate and expand in China, the spokesperson said.
“The EU restrictions on export of high-tech products to China in recent years directly limited the EU’s ability to tap the potential of export to China and led to unbalanced trade between the two sides. If the EU truly wants to address this issue, it needs to lift export controls against China, rather than putting the blame on China,” the spokesperson noted.
Source: Kuwait News Agency