China and the United States
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 U.S. 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 daily
often used by Beijing to put its message out to the rest of the world, warned
while there was now a greater likelihood of reaching an agreement, there’s no
guarantee there would be one.
“Even though Washington agreed to postpone levying additional
tariffs on Chinese goods to make way for negotiations, and Trump even hinted at
putting off decisions on Huawei until the end of negotiations, things are still
very much up in the air,” it said in an editorial late Saturday.
“Agreement on 90 percent of the issues has proved not to be
enough, and with the remaining 10 percent where their fundamental differences
reside, it is not going to be easy to reach a 100-percent consensus, since at
this point, they remain widely apart even on the conceptual level.”
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 U.S. 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 in
the statement released late Saturday.
Trump’s comments on Huawei, made at a more than hour-long news
conference in Osaka following his sit-down with Xi, generated only a cautious
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 United States 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 U.S.
side can do what it says then we will certainly welcome that,” Wang told reporters.
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
U.S.-China Business Council, said returning to talks was good news for the
business community and added much needed certainty to “a slowly deteriorating
relationship”.
“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 United States 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 United States is a long-term, difficult and complex thing. Fighting
then talking, fighting then talking, is the normal state of affairs,” it said.
READ MORE : Today World News
Comments
Post a Comment