European Free Trade Actively Courted by China, America Mildly Interested

NOTHING could be better designed to reassure Eurocrats that Europe remains a force in the world than the arrival in Brussels of the leaders of America and China, the two biggest economies, within days of each other. Barack Obama and Xi Jinping both paid homage to the European Union and sought better trade relations with Europe, the world’s biggest exporter. But there the similarities end. The American president talked mostly of universal values and security as he girded the transatlantic alliance to confront a newly aggressive Russia. Xi Jinping spoke instead of reviving the Silk Road and was non-committal over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Europe is eager to do an ambitious transatlantic trade deal, but lukewarm about Mr Xi’s calls for a separate EU-China trade pact. Europe’s dealings with China are still marked by suspicion, not to say incomprehension. What to make of the gift by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to Mr Xi, for instance? Whether by error or design, Mrs Merkel gave him an 18th-century map that excluded Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria from China’s domains; it also seemed to exclude the islands of Taiwan and Hainan. Official Chinese media either ignored the map or substituted it with a 19th-century one that showed China extending all the way into Siberia.

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