
Has Ursula von der Leyen seen the light on China?
Coming from an American politician, the accusations would have been unsurprising. Beijing is unwilling to ‘live within the constraints of the rules-based international system’ and its trade policy is one of ‘distortion with intent’. It splashes subsidies with abandon, undercuts intellectual property protections, and as for China’s membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), that was probably a mistake too. It is bold of von der Leyen to raise the WTO, and it will be intriguing to see how she is greeted at the EU-China leaders’ summit Yet this tirade came not from an acolyte of Donald Trump, but from Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission
