EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton believes Beijing is ready to step up co-operation after a meeting with her Chinese counterpart.
Her assessment comes after Dai Bingguo, a top-level Chinese foreign policy official, earlier this week invited her on a 20-minute-long boat trip on a lake in the Chinese capital.
Dai rarely meets with foreign delegates directly, preferring instead to make brief appearances in the margins of summits, a European diplomat told EUobserver.
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.