Time for US President Donald Trump to think outside the zero-sum trade war box, says Chinese economist
But US delegation says politicians across the spectrum share fears about Chinese practices
US President Donald Trump is wrong to target China as the United States’ biggest threat and greatest trade rival, a former top Chinese official told a visiting US delegation in a heated exchange highlighting the gulf in trust between the warring economies.
But the group of US congressional aides and non-profit staff said Beijing would be mistaken if it thought that Trump was alone in his concerns about China’s trade practices, according to a transcript of the meeting published on Wednesday by the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a think tank under the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s economic planner.
In the meeting, Chen Wenling, former director of the State Council Research Office and now the think tank’s chief economist, said she understood Trump’s concerns but development was not a zero-sum game.
“I appreciate that President Trump wants to make the US great again and keep the US on top,” the transcript quoted Chen as saying, without specifying when the meeting took place.
“But … he does not really understand the rules of development in human, economic and foreign policy. A country cannot stay number one by suppressing the development of others. This is fundamentally wrong.”
Trump has accused Beijing of using unfair market practices to amass a huge trade surplus and advance its own hi-tech industries at the expense of the West.