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Finbarr Bermingham

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, is expected to travel to China in the autumn for her first face-to-face meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi since a bruising encounter in Brussels last summer, according to multiple people familiar with the planning.
It would also mark Kallas’ first solo trip to Beijing since taking on her role in 2024.
The trip – with a date yet to be confirmed – would revolve around the bilateral “strategic dialogue”, a mostly annual format in which the sides discuss foreign and security policy issues.
High on the EU agenda will be hot topics such as China’s relations with Russia, the ongoing crises in the Middle East and the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait.
At the last such meeting, Wang shocked his European interlocutors by telling them that Beijing did not want Russia to lose the war in Ukraine because that would mean the United States would turn its full attention to Asia.
Insiders described the encounter as tense from the outset, with minor protocol mix-ups and a combative on-camera opening from Kallas in which she pressed Wang over China’s support for Russia.
The mood further soured when Wang felt obliged to raise a toast after the Europeans had not done so, sources said at the time.


Since then, the former Estonian prime minister has maintained her tough line towards Beijing. In June, she said the bloc had verified reports that China’s military had been “training Russian military personnel to fight in Ukraine” – charges denied by Beijing.
Ordinarily, the dialogue sets the political agenda for an EU-China summit, although such an event is not expected to be held this year. While Beijing has offered to send Premier Li Qiang to a summit in Brussels, the EU believes the talks should take place at President Xi Jinping’s level.
Xi has no intention of travelling to the Belgian capital, the bloc has been told, while EU leaders are not keen to travel to Beijing for a third summit in a row, wary of the optics of such a concession at a time of heightened rivalry.
“The EU-China Strategic Dialogue is held annually. The HRVP’s travel plans for autumn are not set yet, but both sides are in touch regarding schedules,” Kallas’ office said in a statement, referring to her full title of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
While both Wang and Kallas attended the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Manila this month, there was no bilateral meeting.
After meeting several counterparts, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and new British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, Wang left for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Kyrgyzstan.
During the plenary session, however, Hua Chunying, Chinese vice-minister of foreign affairs, told Kallas that she would be welcome in the autumn months. While the sides had discussed a bilateral meeting in Manila, scheduling issues prevented it, the EU side was told.
Kallas’ Beijing trip will come amid a ramping up of EU-China dialogue across the board, but also at a moment of extreme tension. The sides are on the brink of a trade war, with the European Commission setting an October deadline for progress in rebalancing ties. Otherwise, it has pledged to adopt a more forceful trade policy towards Beijing.
Kallas’ European External Action Service (EEAS), meanwhile, published a paper this month that accused China – along with Russia – of trying to “reshape the global order in line with their interests” and “fostering a return to a sphere-of-influence logic”.
The paper is seen as the bloc’s strongest-ever official criticism of Beijing. It accuses Beijing of being both a “key enabler” and “crucial enabler” of Russia’s war on Ukraine, language previously used by Nato.
China has denied the widely held perception in Europe that it has taken Russia’s side, claiming to be neutral in the Ukraine war. In response to the paper, its EU embassy issued a diplomatic demarche against the EEAS, the bloc’s de facto foreign office.
In recent encounters with European officials, Beijing has blasted their accusations that it provides dual-use goods that power Russia’s military, insisting that Ukraine’s war effort would also cease to function without products from China.
This illustrates the fine line Europe has to walk amid fears Beijing could cut off supplies of products such as drone components to Kyiv. The dilemma was illustrated late in 2024. At the time, European officials from several countries said that a drone factory in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region was making craft for Russia’s military.
Soon afterwards, the freshly appointed Kallas and European Council President Antonio Costa went to Ukraine. There, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told them to stop talking about the factory lest it jeopardise Kyiv’s own supply lines, according to multiple people familiar with the exchange.
Since meeting in Brussels last July, Wang and Kallas have spoken twice. The first was a brief exchange on the margins of the 2025 Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Malaysia, a week after their explosive talks in Belgium.
The second was a more substantive call on April 2 to discuss the Iran crisis, scheduled after months of silence from Beijing in response to EU efforts to set up a conversation.
The pair clashed again in that call – this time over trade. As Kallas explained recent EU proposals, including the Industrial Accelerator Act and the Cybersecurity Act, Wang fired back with ferocity, according to sources familiar with the exchange. Wang said Beijing would retaliate fiercely and Europe would end up being hurt more than China.


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It will be Kaja Kallas’ first solo trip to China since taking on her role in 2024


It will be Kaja Kallas’ first solo trip to China since taking on her role in 2024.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}It will be Kaja Kallas’ first solo trip to China since taking on her role in 2024

It will be Kaja Kallas’ first solo trip to China since taking on her role in 2024