Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Pence, Xi talk tough on trade, global goals
American vows unyielding stance on tariffs
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traded barbs in speeches at a summit of world leaders Saturday, outlining competing visions for global leadership as trade and other tensions between them simmer.
Pence said there would be no letup in President Donald Trump’s policy of combating China’s mercantilist trade policy and intellectual-property theft that has grown into a tit-for-tat tariff war between the two world powers this year.
The U.S. has imposed additional tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods and China has retaliated. Pence reiterated Trump administration threats to more than double the penalties.
China has offered a list of concessions in recent days, which Trump has called “not acceptable.”
“The United States, though, will not change course until China changes its ways,” Pence said, accusing Beijing of intellectual-property theft, unprecedented subsidies for state businesses and “tremendous” barriers to foreign companies entering its giant market.
Pence announced the U.S. would be involved in ally Australia’s plan to develop a naval base in Papua New Guinea, where the summit is
being held. China has been intensely wooing Papua New Guinea and other Pacific island nations with aid and loans for infrastructure.
“Our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific will prevail,” Pence said.
Reiterating U.S. commitment to Asia, Pence saved his most pointed words for Xi’s top foreign-policy measure — the infrastructure investment plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative — as he warned countries about accepting Chinese loans for port and transportation projects scattered from Pakistan to Indonesia.
The U.S., a democracy, is a better partner than authoritarian China, he said.
“Know that the United States offers a better option. We don’t drown our partners in a sea of debt, we don’t coerce, compromise your independence,” Pence said. “We do not offer constricting belt or a one-way road. When you partner with us, we partner with you and we all prosper.”
The Trump administration has voiced a far harder line against China and its growing footprint and rising assertiveness, spurring talk on both sides of the Pacific of a new Cold War. But the U.S. president’s absence was conspicuous this week at two major Asian summits where Xi, instead, dominated the limelight.
The Chinese president delivered a more conciliatory address on Saturday as he warned that “confrontation, whether in the form of a hot war, cold war or trade war, will produce no winners.”
He dismissed criticism of his Belt and Road Initiative as a debt “trap” and instead positioned his country as a leader of the developing world that could help lift up poor countries in its orbit.
“Many of the entrepreneurs present here are witnesses, contributors and beneficiaries of China’s reform and opening up, and have formed an indissoluble bond with China,” said Xi, who appeared to make an oblique jab at U.S. criticisms of human-rights abuses in Asia by defending alternative models of development.
“We should be less arrogant and prejudiced,” he said. “What kind of road a country takes, only the people of that country can decide.”
Xi also may be looking to shore up ties with an important trading partner, North Korea. He told President Moon Jae-in of South Korea on the sidelines of the trade forum that he was considering visiting the North after its leader, Kim Jong Un, extended an invitation, according to a spokesman for Moon.
Xi expressed support for the global free-trade system that has underpinned his country’s rise over the past quarter century to the world’s second-biggest economy after the U.S.
“The rules made should not be followed or bent as one sees fit and they should not be applied with double standards for selfish agendas,” Xi said.
“Mankind has once again reached a crossroads,” he said. “Which direction should we choose? Cooperation or confrontation? Openness or closing doors. Win-win progress or a zero sum game?”
Responding to a chorus of criticism of China’s international infrastructure drive, Xi said it was not a trap or power grab.
“It is not designed to serve any hidden geopolitical agenda, it is not targeted against anyone and it does not exclude anyone,” Xi said. “It is not an exclusive club that is closed to nonmembers, nor is it a trap as some people have labeled it.”
Pence on Saturday acknowledged that the spillover from U.S.-China competition is “felt” by many Asian countries, and reiterated that the U.S. wanted a better relationship with Beijing.
The two governments are hoping that when Trump and Xi meet in Argentina in a few weeks they can thrash out a deal that could at least freeze escalating tariffs.
“China knows where we stand,” Pence said. “As the president prepares to meet with President Xi at the G-20 Summit in Argentina, we believe that progress could be made.”
Leaders of 21 Pacific Rim countries and territories that make up 60 percent of the world economy are meeting in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, for an annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
They are struggling to reach agreement on a joint declaration, particularly whether to push for changes to the World Trade Organization, which sets the rules for trade and can penalize nations that breach them.
WTO member nations have been unable to reach agreement on further freeing up trade for years and the organization is in danger of
atrophy.
Two thirds of its members claim developing-nation status that allows them to take advantage of benefits and exemptions to obligations not granted to advanced economies, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The U.S., meanwhile, believes the WTO’s arbitration body has made decisions beyond its mandate.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation bloc also is facing questions about its future. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said it will become irrelevant if developing nations continue to be left behind by globalization and free trade.
China’s territorial claims to most of the South China Sea that borders Southeast Asian nations were also a target in Pence’s speech.
China has demanded the U.S. stop deploying ships and military aircraft close to its man-made islands in the disputed waters after American and Chinese ships almost collided near a contested reef in September. But Pence stressed Saturday that the U.S. won’t back off.
“We will continue to fly and sail wherever international law allows and our national interest demands,” he said. “Harassment will only strengthen our resolve. We will not change course.”
Pence flew earlier this week over the Spratlys in Air Force Two in what he told The Washington Post amounted to a “freedom of navigation mission in and of itself.”
Washington will continue to support efforts by Southeast Asian nations to negotiate a legally binding “code of conduct” with China “that respects the rights of all nations, including the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea,” Pence said.
Reiterating U.S. commitment to Asia, Pence saved his most pointed words for Xi’s top foreign-policy measure — the infrastructure investment plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative — as he warned countries about accepting Chinese loans for port and transportation projects scattered from Pakistan to Indonesia.