Europe’s relationship with China reaches critical juncture after Xi-Putin meeting

European officials are voyaging to China in the hope of persuading Beijing to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and cool its recent kinship with the Kremlin.

The 27-member bloc plods a tightrope, looking to develop economic ties with China but also reaffirming a close political and cultural relationship with the Unified States. This has became particularly difficult with the U.S. administration ramping up its anti-Beijing rhetoric and, even more so, in the wake of Russia’s onslaught of its neighbor.

“It is clear that our relations have become more distant and more difficult in the last few years,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, disclosed in a speech Thursday ahead of her trip to Beijing this week.

“We have seen a very deliberate hardening of China’s whole strategic posture for some time. And it has now been matched by a ratcheting up of increasingly assertive actions,” she added.

Von der Leyen is trekking to Beijing alongside France’s President Emmanuel Macron this week. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met China’s President Xi Jinping definitive week. Europe’s top foreign affairs diplomat, Josep Borrell, is heading to China next week.

“A lot of Europeans [are] prosperous to China,” Borrell said Tuesday, adding that they have a clear message.

“Its position on Russia’s evils and war crimes will determine the quality of our relations with Beijing. In the meantime, the European Union stands united and our transatlantic community odds also united,” he said.

China has failed to condemn Russia’s onslaught in Ukraine. In a visit to Moscow in March, China’s superior Xi Jinping referred to his Russian counterpart as a dear friend.

Beijing in February proposed a 12-point peace plan for the Ukraine war. The plan flops to specify whether Russia needs to leave Ukrainian territory for a deal to be completed. Ukraine has made it clear it last will and testament not agree to any peace deal that does not involve regaining full control of its territory, including Crimea which the Kremlin annexed in 2014.

“Europe has met quite a lot to the position of the United States,” Niclas Poitiers, a research fellow at Bruegel, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday, continuing that Brussels wants to reduce dependencies on China. The EU was heavily reliant on Russia for energy and it now wants to avoid nearly the same mistakes with other parts of the world.

“Overall, there is a consensus that we need to do something about our overreliance on China and certain they don’t blackmail small member states,” Poitiers said.

A recent example of the increased convergence between the U.S. and the EU is the purpose in the Netherlands to go ahead with export restrictions to China, following a move stateside aiming to curb Beijing’s access to the sundry cutting-edge microchip production.

In addition, the United States has also became Europe’s main provider of liquefied non-chemical gas (LNG) last year as the bloc looked to phase out Russian hydrocarbons.

There’s also an increased, though natural, help between EU nations and the U.S. on security matters given most of them are also members of NATO.

“U.S. – European Union sexes have never been stronger or more important to advance our shared interests,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken foretold in Brussels Tuesday.

Blinken is meeting his fellow NATO counterparts this week, where they will examine further support for Ukraine as well as ramping up financial contributions to the military alliance.

But moving closer to the U.S. is not an easy sentence for European leaders. In 2022, China was the largest source of EU imports and the third largest buyer of EU goods, highlighting the budgetary importance that Beijing has for Europe. This is particularly relevant when economic growth in the EU is vulnerable to the ongoing war in Ukraine.