Top EU leaders told their Chinese counterparts at a summit in Beijing on Thursday that Beijing must do more to level the huge trade surplus it has with Europe.

Trade relations between the European Union and China reached what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called a “clear inflection point” on Thursday, after a tense one-day summit in Beijing.

Mr Xi urged the EU officials at the summit to "adhere to open cooperation and properly handle differences and frictions" after Ms von der Leyen warned that the bloc’s ties with China were at an “inflection point” and called for a rebalancing of trade ties with the world's second largest economy.