EU and Chinese leaders are on Wednesday to steer clear of tough issues at a fence-mending summit focused on trade and the economic crisis after Beijing canceled their last meeting over the Dalai Lama.
The summit, to be held in Prague, was originally set for last December but China called it off in protest at a meeting between the Tibetan spiritual leader and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Poland.
France held the rotating presidency of the 27-nation EU at that time until Paris handed the baton over to the Czech Republic at the start of the year.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus will host Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) at Prague Castle along with European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
“It’s certainly a fence-mending summit and the problem is that it is only a fence-mending summit,” said analyst John Fox with the European Council on Foreign Relations, lamenting that tough political issues and the environment are on the backburner.
“The best thing that can happen is that the summit goes ahead and that it won’t be prevented by the Chinese being angry at Czech politicians making statements on Taiwan, or Tibet or the Dalai Lama,” he said.
At talks in Brussels earlier this month, EU commissioners and a Chinese delegation headed by Vice Premier Wang Qishan (王岐山) agreed that trade and investment would lead the way to economic recovery.
Two-way trade has exploded in recent years making the EU the top destination for exports of Chinese goods while China is Europe’s biggest trade partner after the US.
Last year they traded 326 billion euros (US441 billion) in goods with Europe running a 169.4 billion euros deficit with China.
However, despite promises to broadly cooperate on trade, China and Europe have many differences on trade issues.
The Chinese government said on Friday it would urge the EU at the summit to relax limits on high-tech exports to China and review its anti-dumping policies.
Beijing is particularly eager to address the issue of gaining market economy status from the EU, which is a standard often used in anti-dumping cases.
In the latest of a slew of EU anti-dumping cases launched against China, the European nations agreed last month to extend anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made candles that enter force on Friday and will last for five years.
The Europeans are eager to get Beijing to commit to ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in view of a key international meeting on climate change in Copenhagen in December but China has proved reluctant.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort