Trade dispute hurting global economy

He Weiwen, senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing and a former trade diplomat, believes China's trade has been resilient in the face of the dispute with the US.

"The US economy has definitely been hit more than China's by the conflict. Our exports to the European Union and ASEAN members have increased substantially despite those to the US falling," he said.

He, a former counselor at the Chinese Consulates General in San Francisco and New York, believes China is in a strong negotiating position and should hold out for a fair deal.

"A deal is obviously better than no deal at all, but a bad deal is worse than no deal as far as China is concerned," he said.

US farmers have been among those worst affected by the dispute, as they have faced Chinese tariffs of up to 33 percent on soybeans and 72 percent on pork.

Aaron Krauter, former head of North Dakota's farm service agency, said China used to buy 80 to 90 percent of the area's soybean output.

"It's a huge loss," he told Fortune magazine. "If it's soybeans, (the impact of the trade war is) really obvious. If it's wheat, it is kind of obvious. If it's other oil seed crops, like canola, they're saying, 'Wait a minute, what happened to our market? What happened to our prices?'"

On Oct 11, Trump said that China buying up to $50 billion of US agricultural products might be part of any phase one deal.

Andy Mok, research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a leading independent think tank in Beijing, believes US farmers have been the real victims of the dispute.

"The agriculture sector has suffered terribly because of this and it may never recover," he said.

Although China's GDP growth slowed to 6 percent in the third quarter, most commentators said this had little to do with the trade dispute.

Wang, at the EIU, said, "The main actual slowdown is in infrastructure and property because of China's policy decisions making conditions tight."

Trading partners in the Belt and Road Initiative do not appear to be significantly affected by the dispute.