An announcement on the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe stated that Beijing will end an anti-dumping inquiry into wine imports from the EU.
The ministry said in a statement that after six rounds of talks since November, Chinese and European wine industry groups signed a memorandum of understanding to “solve the dispute through cooperation”.
Under the deal, the European wine industry will provide a number of technical assistance packages to the Chinese side in areas such as grape growing, winemaking and marketing.
According to Chinese government figures, EU-made wines accounted for 65.2 per cent of China’s total wine imports in 2012 and 15.6 per cent of the Chinese wine market.