Beijing tells Washington to be less ‘erratic’ on trade war as Xi-Trump meeting nears
- US must change its mindset and behaviour model to … normalise bilateral trade relations, Xinhua editorial says
- US leaders’ negative comments have ‘neglected rules and caused confusion’, it says
The United States has been erratic and vague in talking to China and should change its style to de-escalate trade tensions, Xinhua said in an editorial on Wednesday.
China has always treated US concerns with the “utmost patience and sincerity” and put “practical solutions” on the table to avoid trade frictions, the article said. But Washington has been unpredictable and refused to endorse a line that “neither side wants to fight a trade war”, it said.
“The US must change its mindset and behaviour model to … normalise bilateral trade relations” and “must change its stance and return to the negotiation table with equal conditions”, it said.
The editorial was published a month before the scheduled meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
As the South China Morning Post reported earlier, the summit is set to take place on November 29 and will be the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Xi in nearly a year.
Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He said in an interview with state media last week that Beijing and Washington were in contact over trade issues, though he fell short of giving details.
At the same time, the US and China continued pointing fingers at each other over the lack of progress in reaching a truce in the trade war.
Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economic adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that Trump and Xi “will meet for a bit”, but did not provide details. The US had made its requests but China had yet to respond, he said.