EU and China need a grand bargain to avoid a trade war

As European leaders convened at the European Council meeting in Brussels this month, the spectre of a full-blown trade war with China cast a long shadow over the proceedings.

Amid ongoing anti-subsidy probes into Chinese green technology and the looming threat of retaliatory tariffs, the economic bedrock of the China-EU relationship appears increasingly fragile.

Yet, beneath the hawkish political rhetoric, recent high-level meetings between European officials and their Chinese counterparts...