During Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao's visit to Europe this week, he tried to highlight positive ties with Spain, Portugal, and Greece as a way to create leverage against the growing use of EU trade defense tools on Chinese goods and services.

A recent social media post tied to Chinese state media warned against EU actions against Chinese subsidies, stating that "China actually has sufficient countermeasures."

In a statement today, China's Chamber of Commerce to the EU (CCCEU) criticized the EU's enforcement of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) as "selective" and "discriminatory," and questioned its WTO-consistency.

At the beginning of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to France, there was a trilateral meeting in Paris with leaders from China, France and the European Union (EU), with trade and market access as the priority issues.

At a press conference last week, the spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce rejected the concerns about overcapacity in the new energy sector. Instead, he stated, there is a "storage of capacity" to meet the growing demand.

Today, the European Commission initiated its first investigation under its International Procurement Instrument (IPI), in response to measures and practices in the Chinese procurement market for medical devices which it says "discriminate unfairly against European companies and products."

At a Council on Foreign Relations event last week, EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis discussed a number of China trade issues, including the general EU approach to China trade relations, whether the EU is rethinking MFN, and future prospects for unilateral trade action against China.