China’s trade disputes with Australia, US and Japan push Beijing to alter course and plan accordingly

Experts say geopolitical and trade rifts could persist, but China is also looking to join larger multi-country pacts

Tech-related targets make up a big part of China’s five-year plan through 2025, but it could take years for innovation goals to be realised

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China is trying to bolster its own hi-tech development amid strained relations with the United States. Image: Shutterstock

Published: 12:00am, 22 Feb 2022Updated: 1:10am, 22 Feb 2022

Snagged on trade disputes with key partners, China is expected to focus this year largely on multilateral agreements and its own hi-tech development for sustained economic growth.

The World Bank in December forecast 5.1 per cent gross domestic product growth for China in 2022 – one of the slowest rates of the past half-century for a country long dependent on exports from its massive factory complexes.

A four-year dispute with the United States has also generated a combined US$550 billion in import tariffs, mostly aimed at China. That rift is unlikely to close this year, according to Jayant Menon, a visiting senior fellow with the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Regional Economic Studies Programme in Singapore.

“China’s trade policy with respect to the United States has been more reactionary than anything else – responding to, rather than initiating, changes on a tit-for-tat basis,” he said.

Since 2020, Chinese traders have quit importing Australian coal, sugar, barley, lobsters, wine, copper and log timber – in response to political tension between the two countries.

And in June, Japan formally complained to the World Trade Organization over anti-dumping duties that China has been placing on stainless steel products since July 2019, sparking a statement of “regret” from Beijing.

China’s trade with Australia, Japan and the United States totalled US$648.7 billion in 2020.