{"id":3802,"date":"2026-10-09T07:46:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T06:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802"},"modified":"2026-10-09T07:46:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T06:46:03","slug":"the-eu-should-go-for-reciprocity-with-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802","title":{"rendered":"The EU should go for reciprocity with China"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As widely expected, the American-Chinese summit headed by Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping ended without notable progress in the two countries’ trade relations. And the European Union is still looking for seizable trade improvements to tackle China’s enourmous trade surpluses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One billion USD daily<\/strong>
China achieves currently a daily trade surplus of more than one billion USD – partly because of given cost advantages and competitive products but also due to unfair dumping of export prices and at least temporarily of the exchange rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the reasons for the excessive Chinese trade surpluses have two sides. The uncomfortable Chinese dumping issue has already been mentioned. But also Western companies and politicians made decisive mistakes in their China strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What went wrong from the West?<\/strong>
For years, I have pointed in this blog and other published articles at insufficient Western skills on China’s political and economic systems. These shortcomings explain easily many wrong political and managerial attitudes and decisions on China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was certainly wrong by the EU to wait such a long time for a fairer Chinese trade policy. And how could Western corporate leaders believe that previous high profit margins on Chinese markets and extremely high GDP-growth rates could be maintained forever?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also remains a conundrum why European politicians and corporate leaders did not react sufficiently on China’s fast progress in certain technological areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words: Europe should also to some extent blame itself for the trade problems with China. But this is no excuse for China’s unfair trade policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More reciprocity could be a way forward<\/strong>
Now, when European trade tensions with China seem to increase again and attempts to move to more free trade between China and the EU so far obviously did not work, time has indeed come for more promising solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may hereby be a new idea to focus more on reciprocity, i.e. that visible Chinese improvements of trade policy may lead to a lowering of EU tariffs. This is certainly not an easy call because of China’s lagging transparency and difficult definitions for the EU of what a Chinese policy improvement could be. Maybe a EU commisson will have to decide on this by (partly) using qualitative criteria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such an approach could at least mean an incentive for the Ch\u00ecnese to loosen ongoing inflexible support of export practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swedish ideas<\/strong>
We know that Chinese car industry currently performs very poorly. This is both a structural and a business cycleas phenomenon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, there is a an extreme overcapacity in Chinese car industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, only a few Chinese car producers seem to make reasonable profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, the domestic Chinese economy remains very sluggish, strongly driven by skeptical consumers. This may be the main explanation for China’s offensive car exports to the EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, it may be interesting to pay some attention to recent remarks by the CEO of Swedish Volvo Car, H\u00e5kan Samuelsson. He said the other day that it would be the right answer to the Chinese to claim the same efforts as Europeans had to achieve in the Middle Kingdom: coming and producing abroad, in this specific case the other way around in the EU. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach may be an example of reciprocity from the real commercial world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hubert Fromlet<\/em><\/strong>
Affiliate Professor at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As widely expected, the American-Chinese summit headed by Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping ended without notable progress in the two countries’ trade relations. And the European Union is still looking for seizable trade improvements to tackle China’s enourmous trade surpluses. One billion USD dailyChina achieves currently a daily trade surplus of more than one billion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\r\nThe EU should go for reciprocity with China - China Research<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The EU should go for reciprocity with China - China Research\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As widely expected, the American-Chinese summit headed by Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping ended without notable progress in the two countries’ trade relations. And the European Union is still looking for seizable trade improvements to tackle China’s enourmous trade surpluses. One billion USD dailyChina achieves currently a daily trade surplus of more than one billion […]\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Research\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-10-09T06:46:02+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-09T06:46:03+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hubert Fromlet\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hubert Fromlet\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802\",\"name\":\"The EU should go for reciprocity with China - China Research\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-10-09T06:46:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-10-09T06:46:03+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#\/schema\/person\/3c3b67b85e96d1cc89d09dda3a189b38\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/\",\"name\":\"China Research\",\"description\":\"A discussion forum on emerging markets, mainly China \u2013 from a macro, micro, institutional and corporate angle.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#\/schema\/person\/3c3b67b85e96d1cc89d09dda3a189b38\",\"name\":\"Hubert Fromlet\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?author=126\"}]}<\/script>\r\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The EU should go for reciprocity with China - China Research","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The EU should go for reciprocity with China - China Research","og_description":"As widely expected, the American-Chinese summit headed by Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping ended without notable progress in the two countries’ trade relations. And the European Union is still looking for seizable trade improvements to tackle China’s enourmous trade surpluses. One billion USD dailyChina achieves currently a daily trade surplus of more than one billion […]","og_url":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802","og_site_name":"China Research","article_published_time":"2026-10-09T06:46:02+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-09T06:46:03+00:00","author":"Hubert Fromlet","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Hubert Fromlet","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802","url":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802","name":"The EU should go for reciprocity with China - China Research","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#website"},"datePublished":"2026-10-09T06:46:02+00:00","dateModified":"2026-10-09T06:46:03+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#\/schema\/person\/3c3b67b85e96d1cc89d09dda3a189b38"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3802"]}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#website","url":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/","name":"China Research","description":"A discussion forum on emerging markets, mainly China \u2013 from a macro, micro, institutional and corporate angle.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/#\/schema\/person\/3c3b67b85e96d1cc89d09dda3a189b38","name":"Hubert Fromlet","url":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?author=126"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3802"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3805,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802\/revisions\/3805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}