China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao met European Parliament trade committee chair Lange yesterday to discuss China-EU trade ties

• Says themselves and the EU are important economic and trade partners; MOFCOM has pledged closer communication to support stable relations
• Says China was not the root cause of EU problems
• Urged reciprocal EU measures, and advocated expanded investment, EU imports and emerging-sector cooperation under WTO rules

Minister-level meetings of this kind are part of the recurring rhythm of China-EU trade diplomacy, which has historically alternated between periods of friction over subsidies, overcapacity and market access, and phases of managed de-escalation conducted through exactly this channel: commerce ministry engagement with European Parliament and Commission trade officials. The notable feature here is the parliamentary audience rather than an executive one, since the Parliament's trade committee has been a venue where harder lines on China have found expression, and Beijing courting it directly fits an established pattern of working around institutional friction points. The language is standard for these encounters: reciprocal measures, expanded investment and imports, and cooperation framed under WTO rules is the familiar Chinese formulation when seeking to head off restrictive action, and has on previous occasions preceded either negotiated cooling of specific disputes or, where talks stalled, formal trade defence steps from Brussels. The 'China is not the root cause' framing signals defensive positioning rather than new concession. Worth noting is whether the readout is followed by movement on any live dispute file, since the pattern in past episodes is that communiques of this tone matter only when they are followed by concrete sequencing: working groups, deferred deadlines, or withdrawn measures. Absent that, these meetings have tended to be sentiment events rather than policy events.