NOTHING could be better designed to reassure Eurocrats that Europe remains a force in the world than the arrival in Brussels of the leaders of America and China, the two biggest economies, within days of each other. Barack Obama and Xi Jinping both paid homage to the European Union and sought better trade relations with Europe, the world’s biggest exporter. But there the similarities end. The American president talked mostly of universal values and security as he girded the transatlantic alliance to confront a newly aggressive Russia. Xi Jinping spoke instead of reviving the Silk Road and was non-committal over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Europe is eager to do an ambitious transatlantic trade deal, but lukewarm about Mr Xi’s calls for a separate EU-China trade pact. Europe’s dealings with China are still marked by suspicion, not to say incomprehension. What to make of the gift by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to Mr Xi, for instance? Whether by error or design, Mrs Merkel gave him an 18th-century map that excluded Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria from China’s domains; it also seemed to exclude the islands of Taiwan and Hainan. Official Chinese media either ignored the map or substituted it with a 19th-century one that showed China extending all the way into Siberia.

Such missteps aside, Europe’s nervousness about the emergence of China has abated of late. Perhaps Europeans feel more secure, having survived the euro crisis. Or perhaps they have become more pragmatic, realising that they need China to boost their anaemic growth. Rather than fretting that China is buying European firms on the cheap, European governments these days are competing to attract Chinese investment (see article).

It helps that China has become more tractable in trade disputes. The two sides have settled a long row over underpriced Chinese solar panels. Ahead of Mr Xi’s visit, China also dropped its threats to penalise imports of wine and polysilicon (used to make solar panels); and the EU dropped charges of alleged dumping by Chinese makers of telecoms equipment (though not an inquiry into alleged illegal subsidies). The EU likes to think the change is a response to its more muscular approach. More likely, it reflects China’s worry about being excluded from a series of interlocking trade agreements that America is negotiating with the EU, with countries of the Pacific and with selected partners to liberalise trade in services.

“The Chinese are difficult but you can negotiate with them and they will usually respect the deal. With the Russians it’s impossible,” says one figure in Brussels. Mr Xi put it more poetically in Le Soir, a Belgian newspaper. “Rocks cannot interrupt the course of a river in its tumultuous voyage to the ocean. I am convinced that no problem or difference can halt the march of Sino-European friendship and co-operation.”

More than Sino-European relations, though, the unstoppable river may be the flow of Chinese goods around the world. A recent paper for Bruegel, a think-tank, co-written by Jim O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs economist who coined the term “BRIC” (for the fast-rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China), predicts some striking changes. China has already overtaken America as the biggest single trader and will match the EU by 2020. By then, China’s share of global GDP (measured at purchasing-power parity) will also probably surpass the EU’s. Some European countries will lose their share of global trade faster than others. On current trends, by 2020 China will become the biggest single destination for German exports (overtaking France) and the second-biggest for France (displacing Belgium, but still behind Germany). Italy and Germany will export more to emerging and developing markets than to their euro-zone partners (unlike France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands).

All this raises some big questions. Internationally, it will be ever harder for Europeans to justify their disproportionate seats and voting weights in the IMF and World Bank. That may push some to reconsider the idea of a single seat for the EU or perhaps the euro zone. At home, the implications may be harder still. If European countries trade more with the outside world than with each other, the commitment to a single currency may weaken. Yet diverging trade patterns may also mean that euro-zone countries have to become more integrated to be better prepared to resist asymmetric shocks from external partners.

Europe and Chimerica

Some Europeans console themselves with the thought that the Chinese miracle cannot last for ever. They also hope a transatlantic deal will allow America and Europe to set global trade rules and standards for years to come. When it comes to China, Europe wants first to test its readiness to open its markets through an investment agreement before thinking of a wider trade pact.

Yet a transatlantic trade deal could easily be halted by political obstacles. Mr Obama has already told Europeans in private that they need the agreement more than the Americans do. And he has warned them that America would not tolerate an agreement that, together with the euro zone’s deflationary policy, serves only to increase Europe’s trade surplus, particularly with America. Mr O’Neill says that, in any case, trade deals will not do much to alter underlying trends, even if China’s growth slows.

So although recent visits flatter some in Brussels into thinking that the EU can be part of a G3 with America and China, Europe remains the weakest link. The EU’s exclusive competence in trade gives it real bargaining power. But the single trade policy, like the single currency, makes sense only as part of an effort to stimulate liberalisation and economic dynamism at home. Anything less will be swept away by the flow of globalisation.

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne