China: U.S. has ‘knife to our neck’ in trade war
BEIJING — The United States is “holding a knife to our neck” with its attempts to force China to give into its demands to rectify trade imbalances, a top official here said Tuesday, a day after the two sides imposed another round of onerous tariffs on each others’ products.
With both Beijing and Washington holding their ground, the dispute between the world’s two largest economies looks set to rumble on with no obvious end in sight.
China is more than willing to resume talks with the United States, Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen told reporters Tuesday.
“Our door is open for the resumption of trade consultations and negotiations, but to make the negotiations effective, they should be based on mutual respect and treating each other as equals,” Wang said. “But the U.S. has imposed such large trade restrictions, it is like they are holding a knife to our neck.”
A Chinese delegation had been expected in Washington this week for talks on resolving the trade dispute, but the visit was canceled after President Donald Trump last week announced tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, ranging from televisions to toys. That means that about half of the products that Americans buy from China now have an extra 10 percent duty added.
Beijing responded by announcing it would impose tariffs of 5 to 10 percent on an additional $60 billion of American goods, from meat to liquefied natural gas. The new tariff regime took effect Monday.
Showing China had no intention of backing down, the state media was a chorus of defiance on Tuesday, portraying Washington as an unreasonable bully.
“If the Trump administration continues to stick to its unilateral and protectionist stance, and refuses to respect the fundamental norms of mutual respect and consultation, it would be difficult for the two sides to make substantial progress in any future trade talks,” the China Daily said in an editorial.
China would not give in but nor would it retaliate infinitely, the Global Times said.
“China is a country that sticks to principle,” the state-backed paper said in an editorial. “This makes China strategically firm when facing pressure. Unprincipled compromise will only lead to worse scenarios.”
Many analysts here say that Trump has left Beijing with little room to maneuver. Announcing the latest round of tariffs, the president warned that he would slap duties on the remaining $267 billion worth of products that China exported to the United States if Beijing tried to retaliate.
“It’s like saying ‘I’m going to hit you in the face and if you fight back I’m going to hit you some more,’ ” said Yu Yongding, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “How can they expect Chinese diplomats to go to the United States to negotiate? It’s too much.”
Liu He, China’s point man on trade negotiations with the United States, had been expected to travel to Washington this week for talks with Treasury and Trade representative officials. However, the trip was scrapped as the war of words and tariffs escalated.
“Trump thought he could bully China into kowtowing to him. But that’s a very stupid strategy,” Yu said.
The latest round of sanctions had made it less likely, not more, that China would enter into talks, said Mei Xinyu, a researcher at a Commerce Ministry think tank in Beijing.
“Trump wants to make it look like China is being coerced into accepting a deal, and, of course, China will not play along with that,” Mei said.
To make a deal, the demands need to be reasonable, he said. “The American side wants to force China to make a deal under the threat of tariffs on $267 billion worth of Chinese imports. But this idea is wrong.”
To bolster its claim to being the reasonable party in the dispute, the Chinese government Monday released a white paper to “clarify” the facts on the trade friction.
But the paper, which state media uniformly noted was 36,000 characters long, as this somehow made it more reliable, tried to portray China as the bastion of global economic liberalism trying to protect itself — and the rest of the world — from a unilateralist Trump.
It sharply criticized the “protectionism” of the “America first” policy of the U.S. administration — without singling out Trump by name.
“Faced with a host of grave challenges to human progress, all countries, particularly major countries, need to shoulder the obligation and responsibility of guiding and promoting international cooperation,” the paper concluded, urging a rejection of “Cold War mentality” that sees trade as a “zero sum game.”
The paper, filled with tables and case studies, cited research by the U.S. China Business Council and Goldman Sachs and Washington think tanks. It also used examples involving General Motors, Intel and Apple to show why bilateral trade was in the best interest of the United States.
This message was reinforced Tuesday when Fu Ziying, China’s international trade representative, described why the trade war was not in the United States’ interest.
“Overall, the U.S. has gained more from trading with China, and the profits of American businesses are far larger than those earned by Chinese ones,” Fu said at a news conference to unveil the white paper. “Therefore, it can be said that, although China is running a trade surplus, the surplus of interests is on the U.S. side.”
On specific objections to its trading practices — like the charge that China forces foreign companies to hand over their technology, or simply steals it — as a condition for operating here, the white paper said that such transfers are “voluntary” and were designed to maximize the companies’ interests.
It portrayed China as diligently guarding foreign companies’ intellectual property and upholding World Trade Organization rules. In another apparent dig at Trump, it appealed to “mature political leaders in the U.S.” to “come back to their senses” and “redress misguided behaviors” to put bilateral trade relations back on the right track.
There are now signs that the trade war is spilling over into the military sphere, exacerbated by the sanctions that the United States imposed on China last week for buying combat aircraft and surface-to-air missiles from Russia.
The Chinese government has denied the U.S. Navy permission for an amphibious assault ship, USS Wasp, to make a port visit in Hong Kong next month, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
This followed the last-minute cancellation of a meeting between two top naval officials that had been scheduled for Saturday.
Chinese Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong had been scheduled to attend the International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, where he was due to meet the U.S. chief of naval operations, Adm. John Richardson.
“We were informed that Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong has been recalled to China and won’t conduct a visit with Adm. Richardson,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Eastburn said in a statement.
Officials from the Equipment Development Department of the Chinese Central Military Commission will be denied visas to travel to the United States and banned from the American financial system as punishment.