3 September 2010 Last updated at 21:05 ET

EU's Ashton confronts China poverty

Cheap Chinese textiles are putting some European manufacturers under pressure

As Europe seeks closer ties with China, the emerging superpower appears anxious that EU aid and investment should reach beyond its cities.

The EU's new foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, has been seeing rural poverty in China at first hand, as the BBC's Michael Bristow reports.

Guizhou is one of China's most beautiful provinces, with picturesque villages surrounded by forested hills and paddy fields.

It is also one of China's poorest regions. Economic development is not as evident here as in other parts of the country.

This poverty is why Chinese officials brought Lady Ashton to Guizhou.

The EU is currently reviewing its policies towards Beijing, and China wants Europe to know it still has many major problems to sort out.

Lady Ashton, who admitted she had little knowledge of China beyond its trade policies, made it clear she understood the official message.

China's carefully choreographed tour took her to a school in the village of Shanping, an hour's drive outside the provincial capital Guiyang.

The school's relative poverty is revealed in its poorly dressed children and lack of books.

Rural hardship

The EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy was nevertheless impressed with the pupils' dedication.

"I grew up in a very small village and I went to a school that didn't have many books, but it had a lot of good teachers and people willing to give us a hand," she told them.

Many young Chinese move to the cities to escape rural poverty when they have finished school

Her message was that if she can succeed, so can they.

She then went to the nearby village, where she heard stories that are commonplace in rural China: farming families surviving on low incomes and mostly without their young adults, who travel to towns and cities to find better-paid work.

Fu Ying, China's former ambassador to Britain and now a vice-minister in the foreign office, accompanied Lady Ashton.

She told the BBC that it was important for people to see this side of China.

"Without seeing this, if you spend all your time in Beijing or Shanghai, do you think you understand China fully?" was the question Ms Fu posed, without really expecting an answer.

She added: "For villages like this, you need to enable them catch up with the growth of the country."

The message that China will have to concentrate on its own problems for a long time to come was not lost on Catherine Ashton, whose noble title comes from her appointment to Britain's House of Lords in 1999.

She and her Chinese hosts might have been staying at the five-star Sheraton Hotel in Guiyang, but she recognised poverty when she saw it.

"There is still much to do in China in order to ensure that there is real development and the European Union is part of helping that process," she said later at a teahouse.

Strategic ambitions

The main reason for her trip to China was to hold a strategic dialogue in Guiyang with Dai Bingguo, probably the country's top foreign policy negotiator.

Lady Ashton is helping to formulate a new EU approach to China and wants to know more about where this booming country is going.

China is the EU's second biggest trading partner after the US and EU-China trade was worth some 300bn euros (£250bn) last year.

The 27-nation bloc is also the biggest market for Chinese exports - so much so that the EU's trade deficit with China last year reached 133bn euros.

"It's a chance to talk about what China's ambitions are for the future," said Lady Ashton in a break between meetings.

Ashton under scrutiny

But it is not just China's future that she is worried about - her own plans also cropped up.

She was appointed to her current job late last year to the surprise of many, who pointed out that she had little experience in foreign affairs.

A decade ago, her main job was head of Hertfordshire Health Authority in the UK - not everyone's ideal training ground for her current post, negotiating with the world's top leaders.

On a tour of Qingyan, a Ming Dynasty walled town in Guizhou, she revealed she had taken note of those who question her suitability for the job.

As she walked into a fortune-teller's she quipped: "He's going to predict my future - let's see if I've got one."

It was just a joke, but there will be real pressure on Lady Ashton to promote the EU's interests.

And her success in that task will depend in no small part on how she deals with China.