At a press conference in Beijing on Saturday, Borrell said the bloc's "enormous" trade deficit with Beijing, as well as Beijing's stance on Ukraine were among the most important issues raised in talks with China's top diplomat Wang Yi.
Borrell's visit to Beijing was meant to prepare for a China-EU summit later this year, though no date has been set yet.
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Borrell said the EU wants Beijing to see the Ukraine crisis as a security threat to the union and urged Beijing not to see its relations with Brussels through the lens of the bloc's relations with another country - a probable allusion to the United States.
"Until now, China is not providing arms to Russia and it's important," he said. "And I asked [China] not to help Russia on the circumvention of sanctions."
He also said: "The war in Ukraine is not only affecting Ukraine. It is affecting the security of the Europeans. And it is sending shock waves around the world.
"And I asked China to use its influence in order to make Russia go back to the [Black Sea] grain initiative, in order to make Ukrainian grain to be able to be exported to the rest of the world. Otherwise, we will face another food crisis."
Earlier this year, Moscow refused to renew the deal mediated by Turkey and the United Nations to allow food exports to leave Ukrainian ports.
In a speech at Peking University on Friday, Borrell warned that trust had been "eroded" partly because of China's "ambivalent position with regard to both Ukraine and Russia".
He said: "We do consider it essential that China makes a major effort to convince the people of Ukraine that China is not Russia's ally in this war."
He called on Beijing to step up its humanitarian aid to Kyiv and said that the move would improve China's image in Europe.
Later, in a joint press conference with Wang on Friday, he said he had asked China "to use its influence on Russia to stop this war of aggression".
On Saturday Borrell said decoupling with China was impossible - a position Brussels has repeatedly stated.
However, he warned earlier during his visit that the bloc's trade deficit with China was not a result of a simple difference in productivity and pointed to structural reasons such as the persistent difficulties experienced by European companies in gaining access to Chinese markets.
China's surplus with the EU narrowed by 19.6 per cent from a year ago in the first three quarters of 2023 but this was mainly driven by a 10.6 per cent fall in exports from China, according to Chinese customs data.
The war in Ukraine is not only affecting Ukraine. It is affecting the security of the Europeans.
"If the public concludes that the trade imbalance with China is so great as to endanger key sectors, or place our transition towards climate neutrality at risk, it will demand more drastic protectionist measures," Borrell warned on Friday.
Borrell said apart from bilateral relations, "the most crucial part" of his discussions with Chinese officials was the conflict in Israel and Gaza, with both sides agreeing a two-state solution was the only way forward in the long run.
Enrique Mora, the EU's deputy secretary general for political affairs, will visit Beijing next week to continue the dialogue on outstanding regional issues, he added.
Borrell also told Wang that the EU is committed to managing relations with China in a constructive and responsible manner, expecting Beijing to take Brussels more seriously.
"Europe takes China very, very seriously, and we also expect to be considered not through the lens of our relations with others, but in ourselves," he said on Saturday.
Wang had said the previous day that China-EU relations would not be disturbed by a third party.
"There is no fundamental conflict of interest between China and Europe, which are first and foremost partners and where consensus far outweighs differences," he told the joint press conference.
Borrell also met Vice-President Han Zheng on Friday and members of the Shanghai Institutes For International Studies, a think tank linked to the foreign ministry, on Thursday.
