The Chinese Communist party knows better than most organisations that the enemy of your enemy is, potentially, your friend. It even has a special unit, the United Front Work Department, dedicated to recruiting allies and isolating enemies around the world.
Over recent years, however, Beijing has managed to alienate a potentially valuable partner — the European business community — even as it was locked in a damaging trade war with the US.
Instead of finding common cause with the Europeans as he locked horns with China, US President Donald Trump angered them by launching trade wars across the Atlantic Ocean as readily as he did across the Pacific. That gave Beijing a golden opportunity to move quickly and wrap-up a high-quality trade agreement with Brussels, as EU trade negotiators have themselves done recently with Japan and South America’s largest economies.