The message was delivered in European tones, but it had a distinctly American flavour: Beijing must lower its import barriers, raise the value of its currency, protect intellectual property rights and create a level playing field. 'The EU exports less to China than to Switzerland, a country of 7 million people,' said the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, last Wednesday in Beijing after their annual summit meeting.
The European Union is growing increasingly impatient. The EU's trade deficit with mainland China has tripled in the past six years, reaching US$190 billion last year, and is expected to increase more than 30 per cent this year, to US$253 billion.
For many years, Brussels handled Beijing with kid gloves, depicting Europeans as more sophisticated than crude Americans who knew no better than how to twist arms and impose sanctions. Now, however, the Europeans have decided that the soft approach simply does not work, and have opted for confrontation.
And, it seems, this American-style approach gets results. Washington's call for an increase in the value of the yuan has seen the currency rise almost 12 per cent since July 2005.
However, during that period, it has actually fallen 8 per cent against the euro, making Chinese exports to Europe cheaper and fuelling Beijing's trade surplus.
Moreover, while Europe until recently was reluctant to bring action against China in the World Trade Organisation, the US has not been similarly deterred. And, last week, Washington triumphantly announced that Beijing had agreed to terminate prohibited subsidies that gave an unfair advantage to Chinese products while denying US manufacturers the chance to compete fairly. The agreement came nine months after the US, together with Mexico, took action in the WTO.
The new European approach was demonstrated by trade commissioner Peter Mandelson who, on the eve of the summit, delivered no-holds-barred speeches denouncing the safety of mainland exports, its 'tidal wave' of counterfeits, its 'theft' of European technology and its controlled currency.