EU trade chief says 'no intention' to decouple from China amid rising tension

Dombrovskis is on a four-day visit to China seeking more balanced economic ties with the EU. He arrived just over a week after the European Commission said it would investigate whether to impose punitive tariffs to protect European producers from cheaper Chinese electric vehicle imports it says are benefiting from state subsidies.

The European Union has no intention to decouple from China but needs to protect itself in situations when its openness is abused, the bloc's Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said on Saturday.

The bloc posted record bilateral trade with China last year, but it is "very unbalanced", he said in a speech at the annual Bund Summit conference in Shanghai, citing a trade deficit of almost 400 billion euros. Dombrovskis is on a four-day visit to China seeking more balanced economic ties with the EU.

He arrived just over a week after the European Commission said it would investigate whether to impose punitive tariffs to protect European producers from cheaper Chinese electric vehicle imports it says are benefiting from state subsidies. The trip is designed to renew dialogue with China after the COVID-19 pandemic and as EU wariness grows over Beijing's closer ties with Moscow following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.