China firm on resolving trade spat with US

CHINA hopes Beijing and Washington will resolve their trade dispute “with a calm and rational attitude,” Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said yesterday, ahead of talks in two weeks between the two sides.

A new round of high-level talks between the world’s two largest economies is expected in Washington on October 10-11, led from the Chinese side by Vice Premier Liu He.

The United States and China have been locked in an escalating trade war for over a year. The two countries have levied punitive duties on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods, roiling financial markets and threatening global growth.

Wang, who has been part of China’s negotiating team with the US, told a news conference that Liu would go to Washington for the talks the week after China’s National Day holiday, which ends on October 7.

He said he hoped both sides would find ways to resolve their differences. “We believe this will benefit both countries’ people and the world,” he added.

Wang reiterated that China will open up more sectors of the economy to foreign investors, and its policy of protecting foreign companies’ rights in the country will not change.

Earlier, Commerce Minister Zhong Shan told the news conference in Beijing that Chinese companies faced many difficulties due to the trade frictions which he said posed unprecedented trade challenges to the country.

China would expand imports, and measures to stabilize trade would yield positive results, he said without giving details.

The Chinese government’s top diplomat Wang Yi said on Friday that tariffs and trade disputes could plunge the world into recession and China was committed to resolving them in a “calm, rational and cooperative manner.”

(Reuters)