EU to China respectively, among which automobile products accounted for 8.4 %.
In 2012, the proportion of textiles among all the products exported from the EU to
China stood at 1.3 %, while that of chemical products increased to 11.7 % and that
of mechanical and electrical products decreased to 58.5 %, among which that of
automobile products increased to 20.1 %.
In terms of the single product structure, the greatest number of products
imported from China by the EU was office and communication products, while the
greatest number of products exported from the EU to China were automobile
products. In 2012, office and communication equipment from China accounted for
31.9 % of all the products imported from China by the EU, representing the largest
category of imported products and also the largest product category involved in the
EU’s trade deficit with China, while the EU’s trade deficit from this category of
products hit 87.3 billion EUR and accounted for 60 % of the EU’s trade deficit with
China in that year. 56.8 % of the electronic data processing and office equipment
imported by the EU and 50.6 % of the telecommunication equipment imported by
the EU came from China. The largest category of products exported from the EU to
China was other machinery products composed of electrical machinery, electronic
power-driven and non-electronic-power-driven machinery, accounting for 28 % of
all exports to China, followed by transport equipment accounting for 26.4 %; the
transport equipment trade surplus was 28.4 billion EUR, among which trade sur-
plus of only automobile products hit 25.9 billion EUR.
3.2 China-EU Mutual Investments
Compared with the rapidly developing China-EU trade, China-EU mutual invest-
ments have been highly disproportionate. Though statistical standards for invest-
ment data are different between China and the EU, this does not affect judgment
about several general trends.
First, neither side took the other side as its main investment destination.
According to data from Eurostat, the EU’s investments in China accounted for only
4.8 % of the EU’s investments in non-member countries in 2011; the largest
investment destination for the EU was the USA in 2011, during which the EU’s
investments in the USA accounting for 33.8 %. Meanwhile, the USA’s investments
in the EU accounted for 62.2 % of the total investments absorbed from
non-member countries by the EU, while thefigure in the case of China was only
1.3 %.^2 Similarly, China’s investments in the EU accounted for only 11.1 % of its
foreign investments in 2011, while the largest investment destination for China was
Asia, which accounted for 60.9 %.^3
(^2) EuroStat ( 2013 ).
(^3) The Ministry of Commerce, the National Bureau of Statistics, the State Administration of Foreign
Exchange: the2011 Statistical Bulletin of China’s Foreign Direct Investments.
74 C. Xin