(MENAFN- AFP) The European Union's trade chief called Friday for the bloc to defend itself more aggressively against Beijing, saying it would not "get anything from the Chinese by being polite".
Trade Commissioner spoke a day after the 28-nation EU held a summit with China at which the two sides launched negotiations for a landmark investment agreement.
The summit came as the EU and China have seen their commercial relationship grow though it has also characterised by increasing trade disputes over issues ranging from solar panels to wine.
"I don't believe that you get anything from the Chinese by being polite," De Gucht told reporters, quickly adding that the same was true the other way around.
"I mean we stand for our interests and they stand for theirs."
De Gucht emphasised, however, that the EU should wield a bigger stick in line with its global clout.
"We are the biggest economy in the world, but we don't always realise that," he said, stressing that its economy is far bigger than China's.
"We have to defend our interests," he said. "And they also defend their interests and if there are conflicting interests we should try to get a solution and we should be looking at it in a constructive way."
He added: "It's our role and the more clearly we say it the more easily they will accept it."
Trade between China and the EU amounted to $546.0 billion in 2012, according to Chinese customs data, with the country enjoying a significant surplus.
Though the economy of the United States is the largest in the world among individual countries followed by China at No. 2, the EU's total gross domestic product, or GDP, is slightly larger than that of the US and about twice as big as China's.
De Gucht also said that China should not play an inordinately outsized role in terms of the EU's overall policy.
"The EU's trade strategy is not focused solely on China," De Gucht told reporters. "We should just treat them as any other trading partner. A big one, yes, (but) not the biggest one."
He added: "We should be cool with respect to the Chinese."
China and the EU have butted heads over a number of commercial disputes this year, including at the World Trade Organisation.
Beijing and Brussels managed to avoid a trade war over cheap imports of Chinese solar panels, but other disputes, including on Chinese rare earth minerals, are still simmering.
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