China, US in ice-breaking talks
CHINA and the US will face a long road before they can reach a deal to end their bitter trade war, with more fights ahead likely, Chinese state media said after the two countries’ presidents held ice-breaking talks in Japan.
The world’s two largest economies are in the midst of a bitter trade war, which has seen them level increasingly severe tariffs on each other’s imports.
In a sign of significant progress in relations on Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, agreed to a ceasefire and a return to talks.
However, the official China Daily, an English-language publication often used by Beijing to put its message out to the rest of the world, warned that while there was now a greater likelihood of reaching an agreement, there’s no guarantee there would be one.
Trump also offered an olive branch to Xi on Huawei Technologies Co, the world’s biggest telecom network equipment maker. The Trump administration has said the Chinese firm poses a national security risk given its close ties to China’s government, and has lobbied US allies to keep Huawei out of next-generation 5G telecommunications infrastructure.
The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, in a lengthy statement about G20 released by the Foreign Ministry following the delegation’s return to Beijing, said the Xi-Trump meeting had sent a “positive signal” to the world.
Though problems between the two countries remain, China is confident as long as they both follow the consensus reached by their leaders they can resolve their problems on the basis of mutual respect, Wang said.
Trump’s comments on Huawei, made at a more than hour-long news conference in Osaka following his sitdown with Xi, generated only a cautious avoid an inter-institutional conflict, so it will take a while.” Lawmakers from the European Parliament want the commission president be chosen from the top candidates who stood for their respective parties in May’s elections welcome from China. The word “Huawei” was not mentioned at all in the top diplomat’s appraisal of G20.
Wang Xiaolong, the Foreign Ministry’s special envoy of G20 affairs and head of the ministry’s Department of International Economic Affairs, said if the US does what it says on Huawei then China would of course welcome it.
“To put restrictions in areas that go beyond technology and economic factors will definitely lead to a lose-lose situation. So if the US side can do what it says then we will certainly welcome that,” Wang said.
The pause in tensions is likely to be welcomed by the business community, and markets, which have swooned on both sides of the Pacific due to the trade war.
Jacob Parker, vice-president of China operations at the US-China Business Council, said returning to talks was good news for the business GLASTONBURY: Naturalist David Attenborough appeared on the stage at Glastonbury yesterday to praise its ban on single-use plastic bottles, delighting festival-goers.
The broadcaster’s Blue Planet II documentary highlighted the dangers of plastic pollution to marine life and the 93-year-old said the move at the world’s largest greenfield festival would have an impact. “That is more than one community. “Now comes the hard work of finding consensus on the most difficult issues in the relationship, but with a commitment from the top we’re hopeful this will put the two sides on a sustained path to resolution.”
China’s position as the trade war has progressed has become increasingly strident, saying it would not be bullied, would not give in to pressure, and that it would “fight to the end”.
Taoran Notes, an influential WeChat account run by China’s Economic Daily, said the US was now aware that China was not going to give in, and that tariffs on Chinese goods were increasingly unpopular back home.
“We’ve said it before – communication and friction between China and the US is a long-term, difficult and complex thing. Fighting then talking, fighting then talking, is the normal state of affairs,” it said. million bottles of water that have not been drunk by you in plastic,” he said to cheers and applause.
Growing calls for action by the public in part prompted about 180 countries to agree last month to reduce the amount of plastic that gets washed into the world’s oceans.
Glastonbury has banned the sale of water, soft drinks and alcohol in plastic bottles this year. In 2017 more than one million single-use BRITAIN’S lead Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins will leave his role in government shortly after briefing the new prime minister.
Robbins had been criticised by Brexiteers for helping negotiate Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, which has been rejected by lawmakers.
In a further possible change, Cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill is being lined up to become the new British ambassador in Washington under a Boris Johnson administration according to newspaper reports.
Former foreign minister Johnson and current foreign minister Jeremy Hunt are battling each other to succeed May as prime minister and finally deliver Brexit which has been delayed until October 31.
Meanwhile Hunt has suggested he would take a tough line on the $50 billion (R704bn) Brexit bill owed to Brussels if there is a failure to agree the terms of Britain’s exit from the bloc. plastic bottles were sold on site.
Festival-goers were encouraged to bring their bottles or buy steel flasks that could be filled with water at taps around the site.