China Reaches Deal to End Wine Spat With EU

(WSJ) - China said it has reached a deal with the European wine industry to end a trade dispute over wine imports from the European Union.

The two sides will instead "resolve the dispute through cooperation," Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said in a statement posted Friday on his ministry's website.

Calls to the EU's office in Beijing weren't immediately answered on Friday.

The move comes a day ahead of President Xi Jinping's first visit to Brussels since assuming office a year ago. Analysts and officials have said Mr. Xi wants to use the trip as an opportunity to shore up economic ties between China and the EU, including the acceleration of negotiations on a bilateral investment deal.

The EU is China's largest trading partner.

Relations in recent years have taken a rocky turn because of a series of trade disputes over wine, telecommunications equipment and solar panels, among other products. But officials on both sides have since moved to defuse tensions.

The European Commission last year began a probe into industry claims of unfairly priced solar-panel imports from China that had allegedly forced dozens of European manufacturers to halt production. Shortly after Europe announced penalty duties on the panels, China launched an antidumping probe into wine imports from the EU, in a move that was generally seen as retaliation for the solar-panel probe.

The deal announced Friday came after five months of talks, the ministry said. "We have reason to believe that Sino-European cooperation will develop faster and better in the future," Mr. Gao said.