Li seeks to cool trade disputes

Premier Li Keqiang visited just one EU member state on his recent trip to Europe and to no one's surprise this was the largest and most influential member state - Germany. As a result of the financial crisis, Germany has become even more important within the EU, setting the terms of the bail outs for countries such as Greece, Cyprus and Ireland.

Being responsible for over a third of all EU exports to China, Germany is also the main trading partner of China. It has proved a bonus for German companies to have such a large overseas market when other European economies have plunged into recession. The EU is China's most important trading partner, while for the EU, China is second only to the United States. Chinese exports to the 27-member bloc totalled 290 billion euros ($375 billion) last year, with 144 billion euros going the other way.

Inevitably Berlin's voice counts in trade disputes between the EU and China such as the current stand-off regarding solar panels. The EU accuses China of pricing its solar panels and mobile telecom devices too cheaply and "dumping" them in Europe to corner the market. It plans to impose duties on Chinese panel makers. Speaking at a joint press conference with Premier Li, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would do everything it could to prevent the trade dispute from escalating to the point where the European Commission imposed import duties of just under 50 percent on Chinese panel makers. "Germany will do what it can so that there are no permanent import duties and we'll try to clear things up as quickly as possible," Merkel told reporters after a meeting with Li in Berlin. "We don't believe that this will help us, so we want to use the next six months intensively."