EU should look out for ourselves. No need to choose anyone. Work on mutually beneficial relationship, that benefits Europe.

Beijing, in its turn, has been opening up sectors such as telecommunications, banking or manufacturing for foreign investment, he said.

What? Beijing has done the exact opposite. The latest brick in China’s legal wall took effect just last year with what the party-state calls “anti-espionage law”, an opaque regulation that creates new risks for foreign companies, business travelers, academics, journalists, researchers. Its nebulous language allows China significant leeway to investigate and prosecute foreign corporations at will.

And China makes wide use of this. Last year, even before the new law took effect, Chinese authorities detained staff of Mintz Group, a US due diligence group. They were later released as far as I can remember, but all they did was market research.

As a foreigner it’s also impossible to found a subsidiary in China, you need a Chinese partner that would then own the majority of the joint venure. China has been closing down further in recent years.

“We should put our focus on partnership. China will never be a threat or any kind of enemy to the EU,” Yao said, praising the bloc’s multilateral approach to foreign affairs, as opposed to President Donald Trump’s isolationist agenda.

China has no interest in a partnership, not with the EU nor anyone else. They are a constant threat to their neighbours, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Buthan, and all the others. In addition, China has been engaging in transnational repression, targeting political exiles abroad to silence dissent across the globe, including in Europe.

And this is just a TINY selection of issues with China.

[Edit typo.]

Chinese people eat dogs and are zoosadists, sorry but no.

No unconditional deals. At the very least, it can’t be a deal that benefits mostly only China. Secondly, I think we should vouch for Taiwan’s independence or at least masquerade it as vouching for China to leave it along/respect it’s autonomy. We cannot forget what kind of government the PRC has and we should be wary. Also no Chinese tech with hidden backdoors or Chinese software.

Yeah pass, why replace one dictator with another. Plenty of other democratic nations in the world to trade with, we dont need a single one big partner either, replace the one big partner with many small. Its called diversification.

Yeah, China and Spain appear to have good relationships. Spain’s PM Pedro Sanchez visited China just last week again, after his visits in 2024 and 2023.

One of Mr. Sanchez’s trusted figures regarding China-relations is former PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), who co-founded the Gate Center, a Spanish-Chinese organization aiming to strenghten the two countries’ ties., together with Chinese businessman Du Fangyong.

Mr. Zapatero has also acted as an intermediary to improve the image of Chinese company Huawei in Spain. The partner of Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares was vice president of Huawei Spain, and Esteban González Pons, deputy secretary general of Spain’s People’s Party (PP), supported Huawei’s participation in European technological infrastructure projects.

In 2021, another PP politician, MEP Gabriel Mato supported the EU-China Investment Agreement, highlighting its potential to open the Chinese economy to European investors and promote what he called “fairer conditions” (Mr. Mato did not elaborate about Beijing’s conditions for foreign investments in China, though). Last year, in 2024, Juanma Moreno, the president of the Spanish region of Andalusia, also made an official visit to China.

None of them ever discussed human rights issues, though.

Would be nice to have closer relations to China if it’s mutual beneficial. No need to sever our relations anymore because the US tells us to do so.