BASIS FOR CHINA-EUROPE TIES

The astonishing growth of China-Europe trade shows that the European economy is recovering.

"The European economy is stabilizing and picking up, with its GDP growth in the first three quarters of 2017 surpassing that of the United States," Zhao Chen, chief of European International Relations Department at Institute of European Studies under Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua.

"With a developed high-end manufacturing industry, Germany, a leader in the European economy, maintained a financial surplus in 2017," said Zhao.

He believed that the recent failure to form a coalition government in Germany is temporary and a stable government will be established at the beginning of 2018.

"Led by the German economy, Europe's internal demand and exports are expected to increase gradually," Zhao said.

"The basis for the China-Europe relations lies in economy," he said. " China will expand exports in 2018 and the improvement of the European economy will promote a more balanced bilateral trade relationship."

In the eyes of Lai Suet Yi, lecturer and researcher with the Center for European Studies at China's Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China-European Union (EU) trade relations will be "more bumpy" than before.

"Due to the rise of anti-globalization sentiment as well as populism inside the EU, China-EU trade relations will be more bumpy than before, especially on steel over-productivity, anti-dumping duties and China's outward investment to the EU," Lai told Xinhua.

But such disputes will not affect China-Europe trade at large. "In the over-560 billion-US-dollar bilateral trade, disputes cover only less than 3 percent of the total and most of it is win-win," Zhao said.

"Therefore, cooperation far outweighs divergence," he said.