China, US should solve problems positively

The United States' capricious way of policymaking and swinging "big sticks" for negotiations will do no good in solving problems and China has to take strong countermeasures, the Ministry of Commerce said Thursday.

Gao Feng, spokesman for the ministry, said the two sides had achieved positive outcomes in the agriculture and energy sectors during previous talks in both Washington in May and in Beijing early this month.

"The two sides once agreed to have another round of talks on the manufacturing and service sectors and hold a detailed discussion on the structural issues in the following days," Gao said. "However, we are deeply sorry that the US has been acting unpredictably with its policymaking and has triggered a trade war."

Gao said the outcomes from the previous talks had been positive and productive, but China had to respond in a strong manner because the US government was being unpredictable and challenging.

"The US is accustomed to negotiating with others while holding 'big sticks'," Gao added. "But it does not work for China, and such irrational behavior will do no good in solving any issues."

To counter the Trump administration’s threats to slap a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese products — in addition to issuing a tariff list for $50 billion Chinese goods — China fired back by being preparing “qualitative and quantitative” countermeasures after introducing tariffs on the same amount of US goods, $50 billion, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday. That amount includes automobiles, even though China had announced lower duties on imported vehicles of an average of 13.8 percent last month.

"Lowering import tariffs is a practical measure for China to further open up," Gao said. "It is an unwilling decision for us to impose an additional tariff on imported vehicles from the US, but we have to do it to respond to the US tariff hike."

He said the US always blames other countries for its own inner structural problems, and that accusing China of forcing technology transfers and stealing intellectual property is a serious distortion of the facts.

"Someone accused the Chinese government of forcing foreign companies to transfer their technology, but I have never heard of such actions," said Wu Song, general manager of the product and distribution department of Johnson Controls in the Asia-Pacific region, a US industrial conglomerate.

Economists note the US global trade deficit started to balloon several years before China’s surplus started to surge. They said that suggests the reason behind the imbalance lies somewhere other than China.

Trump's thinking on trade is largely misguided, said Yukon Huang, a senior fellow in the Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"The reason why we have a trade war is the fundamental assumptions which triggered this, in my view from a White House perspective, is totally wrong," Huang told the Associated Press.

Such assumptions, he said, included the idea that the trade deficit is a problem and that there’s too much US investment in China when in fact there's too little.

The trade surplus China has with the US was caused by the country's role as the final assembly point in the industrial chain for components imported from neighboring economies, Liang Ming, director of the Institute of International Trade at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, was quoted by the AP.

"Even though the demand for the consumption of goods from the US is increasing, the spending power is still limited due to the average income of the Chinese consumers, which is about one-tenth in the US," he said.

Imposing new tariffs on Chinese goods is only an excuse for the US government to irrationally pursue political goals, as it has placed heavy restrictions on high-tech exports to China, said Lyu Xiang, a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He said the trade deficit issue will disappear automatically or drop significantly if the US can trade with China in high-tech products including aircraft engines, inertial navigation systems, lasers, optical fibers, depleted uranium, underwater video cameras and propulsion systems, advanced composite materials and communications equipment.