Chinese investors spent four times as much on acquisitions in the EU last year as European companies did in China, according to new figures that will inflame an already heated debate about growing imbalances between the world’s two largest markets.  

A report by Rhodium Group, a research firm, and the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think-tank in Berlin, estimates that Chinese direct investment in the EU surged 76 per cent to €35.1bn in 2016. EU acquisitions in China, by contrast, fell for the second consecutive year, to €7.7bn. 

“The growing gap in two-way investment flows is fuelling European perceptions of a fundamental lack of ‘reciprocity’ between the EU and China,” said Thilo Hanemann at Rhodium. “Chinese interest is growing rapidly in sectors that remain restricted to foreign investors in China, which has further amplified the political salience of unequal market access.”