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.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Beijing at a tense bilateral summit this week, making no headway on geopolitical disputes and only modest advances on trade and climate change.

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.