China is drawing up plans to order hundreds of Airbus planes as Xi Jinping seeks to build closer ties with Europe.

Beijing is in talks with the European aerospace giant to order up to 500 jets against the backdrop of the trade war with the US.

If completed, the order could be announced at a summit in the Chinese capital next month where Xi will host Friedrich Merz, the new German chancellor, and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, as first reported by Bloomberg.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Antonio Costa, the EU Council chief, are also expected to attend in a sign of the bloc’s increased willingness to forge a closer relationship with China.

It comes amid heightened trade tensions between China and the US, with Beijing recently banning its airlines from buying jets from Boeing. That followed Donald Trump’s decision to impose aggressive tariffs on China.

The potential 500-plane deal between China and Airbus would pile further pressure on Boeing, which has battled to rebuild its reputation after one of its doors blew out last year.

The proposed agreement would be one of the largest single orders of commercial aircraft ever. The current record is held by Indian airline IndiGo, which ordered 500 Airbus planes in 2023.

It would likely be China’s largest order ever too, overtaking the $37bn (£27bn) spent on 300 Airbus jets three years ago.

The deal highlights China’s lingering dependence on imported planes despite its attempts to build up its own aerospace industry.

The C919, a rival to the 737 developed by local plane maker Comac, has won only a handful of export deals.

Boeing has what it calls a completion and delivery centre in China but no actual production line there.

That is in contrast to Airbus, which operates two final assembly lines for narrow-body jets in the city of Tianjin, 70 miles from Beijing.

China has long sought to limit its trade with Boeing, notably becoming the first country in the world to ground its 737 Max planes in the wake of two deadly crashes involving the jets in 2019.

It was also one of the last to allow the plane to re-enter service, which led some Chinese airlines to abandon orders.

Airbus declined to comment.