China, US too intertwined to ‘break up’ despite trade war, Xi Jinping says in Russia
- President tells forum in St Petersburg he does not want a decoupling from Washington and doubts his ‘friend’ Donald Trump does either
- On efforts to boost global trade, Xi says he wants to be ‘a constructor, not a destroyer’
Chinese President Xi Jinping has warned against a decoupling of the US and China as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies continue.
Speaking to businessmen and officials at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Xi, sitting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, said he believed disengagement would be dangerous and that his “friend”, US President Donald Trump, would share the same view.
“There are some trade frictions between us and the US, but China and the US are closely intertwined, and we are each other’s biggest investor and trade partner,” he said.
When asked if he thought China’s relationship with the US should be adjusted as globalisation has come under pressure, Xi said: “More than 10,000 people fly between China and the US on a daily basis, which is about 4 million [people] a year.”
“I can hardly imagine a complete decoupling between China and the US. This is not the case that I would like to see, and I don’t think our American friends want to see it, and my friend [Donald] Trump wouldn’t want to see it either.”