China's Commerce Minister wraps up trip to Europe amid trade tensions between Beijing and Brussels

China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao has wrapped up a trip to Europe, holding talks this week with the French and Italian governments amid trade tensions between Beijing and Brussels.

Wang met with Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani over two days in Verona. At the Italy-China Business Dialogue Forum on Friday, the Chinese Commerce Minister told delegates that the aim is to expand trade into new sectors, such as renewable energy.

"Hearing what the expectations are from Chinese companies, they are very high and this demonstrates a great willingness to strengthen bilateral trade," said Wang. "This shows that all of you here, from the business community, are in the vanguard of our two countries' business worlds… in 2023, bilateral trade exceeded $60 billion, for the third consecutive year."

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Despite that optimistic tone, multiple trade disputes have broken out between the European Union and China in recent months.

Since the autumn of 2023, the European Commission has launched a series of state subsidy investigations relating to Chinese products, including electric vehicles and wind turbines. The Chinese government said this week that it "resolutely opposes" the EU probes.

This year Italy has also left China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It was previously the only G7 nation to be part of China's global infrastructure project, having signed a memorandum of understanding in 2019 under former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

At a press conference on Thursday in Verona after talks between Italian and Chinese officials, Italy's Foreign Minister insisted that the decision to leave the BRI will not derail trade ties with Beijing.

"The departure from the BRI by Italy was due to it not producing the economic benefits that we had hoped for, those outside the agreement had better commercial relations than we had. But it wasn't an act of hostility towards China," Tajani told reporters.

On the first leg of his trip, China's Commerce Minister held talks with French officials and car industry insiders on market access for Chinese electric vehicle companies.

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