China's diplomatic charm offensive

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

62% : "This is an opportunity for China and the EU to enhance mutual pragmatic co-operation.
56% : Speaking at China's Boao Forum for Asia in March, one of Beijing's premier international conferences, Huang Yiping, dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, said the "good side" of the current situation was that the existing global economic order was already in place, including the UN, IMF, World Bank and other institutions.
56% : Other diplomats say that underneath the friendly overtures, there are still signals of hawkishness in Beijing towards the EU, with Beijing more interested in bilateral deals with individual countries, such as Spain, Hungary, Portugal and Slovakia.
51% : China's exports to the EU have more than doubled in terms of value in the past decade, resulting in record Chinese surpluses with the bloc.
50% : "We cannot say that there is a fundamental change of the transatlantic relations but realistically, maybe there is more political room for the EU to develop its relationship with China a little bit more independently," says Shi Yan, an expert on China-EU policy at the Center for International Security and Strategy in Tsinghua University, Beijing.
49% : "China cannot help the EU to protect itself from Trump's policies and the benefits from enhancing EU-China relations are not evident.
48% : In the wake of "liberation day", European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen signalled a thaw in trade relations during a call with China's Premier Li Qiang.
47% : "Our joint effort . . . to uphold the multilateral trading system and promote trade liberalisation . . . will bring much-needed stability and certainty to the world economy," said Guo Jiakun, China's foreign ministry spokesperson.
47% : Since Trump launched the latest phase of his trade war, Wang has met scores of foreign ministers and heads of state from almost every corner of the world, ranging from Nigeria and Switzerland to Japan and Uzbekistan.
47% : The toughest nut to crack for China's diplomatic charm offensive -- and one of the most important in terms of trade -- is expected to be the EU.
42% : There are deep objections to Chinese trade surpluses and suspicion over its state-driven economic model that diplomats argue leads to overcapacity and deflation.
38% : Chief among them is pushback from non-US trading partners, including the EU, Brazil, India and Turkey, against China's large trading surpluses of industrialised goods.
34% : " Chinese academics say Beijing is not looking for a wholesale reset with the EU, nor for Europe to distance itself from the US -- that would be unrealistic in the near term given their decades-long close ties.
29% : While China suffered the worst of the tariffs, Trump also imposed steep levies on other countries, including some close US allies, before eventually pausing these for 90 days for negotiations.
29% : By contrast Trump would have his work cut out persuading south-east Asian countries to significantly reduce transshipments of Chinese goods given their trading relationships with Beijing, said Gavekal analyst Tom Miller in a recent note.
29% : While Trump may have handed Beijing the momentum in their superpower tussle for influence, China faces a number of potential threats.
27% : "China's charm offensive -- no matter how timely given Trump's aggression against the EU -- should be ignored," said Alicia García Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis in a recent note.
25% : [But] "because Trump is acting so rudely, the Chinese will look like the good guys".
15% : Beijing's attempt at rapprochement with the EU is just one part of a frenzied global charm offensive that China has embarked on since US President Donald Trump unveiled his "liberation day" tariffs on April 2.

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