Xi Jinping becomes first president to visit EU HQ for top-level talks

Chinese leader Xi Jinping began a ground-breaking European Union visit on Monday, arriving for talks with the bloc’s top officials in the first visit to EU headquarters by a Chinese president.

After a red-carpet day with Belgium’s royals and a visit to a zoo to open a habitat for a pair of giant pandas on loan from Beijing, Xi got down to serious business in talks expected to touch on the crisis in Ukraine, human rights and quarrels over trade.

The Chinese leader, on the last leg of his first official tour of Europe, meets successively with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Parliament chief Martin Schulz.

The EU too rolled out its red carpet for Xi to meet Van Rompuy as the Chinese leader stepped into EU offices amid very little security fuss and a few flag-wavers - a sharp contrast to the traffic turmoil caused by US President Barack Obama a few days ago.

With no press conference scheduled, after Xi turned down a request by his hosts, few details are expected to emerge. But business has loomed large throughout the tour, and with the European bloc as China’s largest trading partner - two-way trade is at more than a billion euros a day - economic issues are likely to dominate.