Chinese President Xi Jinping's wife, Peng Liyuan, speaks with children in Bruges, on April 1, 2014, during her husband's official visit to Belgium. Photo: AFP/BELGA

Chinese President Xi Jinping's Europe trip has had practical diplomatic achievements as well as bringing a human touch, experts said.

Xi's 11-day trip of four nations, including the Netherlands, France, Germany and Belgium, ended on Tuesday, after he gave a speech at the College of Europe celebrating Chinese civilization and retrieving the need of setting up cooperation between China and EU.

A breakthrough on a long-awaited trade agreement between China and the EU is seen as one of the major achievements of the trip. The EU committed for the first time to opening talks on the multi-billion-dollar free-trade deal if current negotiations on an investment agreement to improve business ties are successful.

It was not an easy promise for the EU to give due to its trade protectionism and its economic ties with the US, which repel emerging countries, Qu Xing, director of the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

However, "it can not overlook the influence of China as the world's second largest economy," Qu said, adding that trade barriers would hurt the EU. 

The EU is China's largest trade partner while China is the EU's second largest. More than $588.6 billion worth of goods is traded between the EU and China every year, amounting to $1.6 billion every day, data from the European Commission showed.

However, Europe sells a lot less to the Chinese than it buys from them. In 2013, its trade deficit with China was $180 billion, CNN reported, adding that European investors want to take advantage of China's growing middle class and export more.

Europe's trade relationship with China has suffered several setbacks over dumping accusations in the past. "Some barriers such as the different perspectives on governance and the deficient decision-making mechanism in the EU will still affect the negotiation process," Qu believed, adding that there is a long way to go to nail the deal.

Besides the achievements in economic ties, Xi's diplomatic moves during his trip "have brought the house down," Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po commented on Tuesday.

Xi published four articles in the mainstream media in Europe and made several speeches during his trip.

Xi's trip demonstrated a distinctive Chinese style, the paper said.

"Xi's diplomatic approach has shown China's openness to a multi-cultural world and built mutual trust with those countries," Wang Yizhou, a professor at the School of International Studies, Peking University, told the Global Times.