Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng to lead trade talks with US in France

Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng will lead a delegation to France from Saturday to Tuesday for the sixth round of China-US economic and trade consultations, the Ministry of Commerce said on Friday.

China urged the United States to correct its wrongdoings and return to the right track of resolving issues through dialogue and consultation, the ministry said after Washington launched trade probes to ramp up tariff pressure.

China noted that the United States has initiated Section 301 investigations against 16 economies, including China, under the pretext of "overcapacity", a spokesperson for the ministry said.

"Such investigations are a classic example of unilateralism that severely disrupts the international economic and trade order," the spokesperson said.

"A WTO panel has long ruled that tariff measures imposed under Section 301 investigations violate WTO rules."

The world economy has long been an inseparable whole, with both production and consumption global in nature, which requires supply and demand to be matched at the global level, the spokesperson said.

If every country only produced enough to meet its own domestic demand, there would be no cross-border trade at all, the spokesperson added.

The US cannot narrowly define a country's production exceeding domestic demand as "overcapacity" and label it as such, the spokesperson said.

Nor does the US have the right to unilaterally determine whether its trading partners have "overcapacity" through Section 301 investigations and then impose restrictive measures, the spokesperson added.

China has also noted that the US has initiated separate Section 301 investigations against 60 economies, including China, under the pretext of "failure to prevent trade in products produced with forced labor", and China is currently analyzing and assessing the move.

China will closely monitor developments and reserves the right to take necessary countermeasures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests, the spokesperson added.