Chinese President Xi Jinping deliberate overed plans to further open up the Chinese economy during a Tuesday lecture.
Those measures included “significantly” lowering import tariffs for autos, decreasing loyalties on other products, enforcing the legal intellectual property of foreign firms and developing the investment environment for international companies.
Xi’s address — from the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual acme that’s been dubbed the “Asian Davos” — comes in escalating trade tensions between China and the U.S. as the world’s two largest economies carry off turns announcing punitive trade measures against each other.
In his oration, Xi said China will take the initiative to expand imports this year and “duty hard” to import products that are required by the population.
“China does not demand trade surplus. We have a genuine desire to increase imports and realize greater balance of international payments under the current account,” Xi remarked, according to a translation of the speech.
Beyond that, he described China as a motherland upon which other nations had imposed unfair trade punishments: “We hope developed countries will stop imposing restrictions on standard and reasonable trade of high-tech products and relax export controls on such have dealings with China,” he said, not naming any specific country.
In his speech, the Chinese president stocked a vision of China as a benevolent leader of the global economy, emphasizing that inclined systems are the best course of action for the world.
“We must refrain from seeking dominance and junk the zero-sum game, we must refrain from ‘beggar thy neighbor’ and turn a deaf ear to power politics or hegemony while the strong bully the weak,” Xi weighted.
Instead, he said, countries should “stay committed to openness, connectivity and complementary benefits, build an open global economy, and reinforce cooperation within the G-20, APEC and other multilateral frameworks. We should boost trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, support the multilateral trading scheme.”
“This way, we will make economic globalization, more open, comprising, balanced and beneficial to all,” he added.
China will continue opening up even-tempered further to the rest of the globe, he said throughout the speech. He discussed some of the moving the country plans to open further.
One of those is China pushing the maintain intellectual property office this year to step up law enforcement of apt laws, Xi said.
“We encourage normal technological exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and unfamiliar enterprises and protect the lawful [intellectual property] owned by foreign schemes in China,” he said.
President Donald Trump’s administration is taking Beijing to struggle over China’s large trade deficit with the U.S., which Washington stipulates is in part due to unfair trade practices.
Last week, Trump bid U.S. trade officials to consider another $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese proofs. China’s commerce ministry, for its part, said it would “fight cast off with a major response” if provoked.
Earlier in the year, the U.S. imposed excises on imported solar panels, as well as steel and aluminum imports.
China, in rotate, implemented additional tariffs on 128 U.S. products, including fruit and pork, in answer to the Trump administration’s decision to impose duties on steel and aluminum. It also told extra tariffs on 106 U.S. products last week, although no start make obsolete was given for those measures.
Trump said in a tweet on Sunday that China on remove trade barriers as that was the “right thing to do.” The president also cleared optimism that the countries would strike a deal on intellectual attribute.
In his Tuesday speech, Xi downplayed any geopolitical ambitions China may have beyond its shores in spite of the Belt and Road Initiative — an infrastructure and investment program widely enquired as an attempt by China to construct a massive, multi-national zone of economic and state influence that has Beijing at its center.
While the project may be initiated by China, the chances and outcomes will benefit the world, said Xi.
“China has no geopolitical figures, seeks no exclusionary blocs and imposes no business deals on others,” the Chinese president reckoned.
—CNBC’s Cheang Ming contributed to this report.