China says US putting 'knife to its neck', hard to continue trade talks
China's vice commerce minister said trade talks with the US are complicated at the moment and accused the US of bullying China and holding “a knife to its neck”.
Wang Shouwen said at a news conference in Beijing that talks now depend on the “will” of the US, Reuters reported.
The comments come after both countries imposed the latest round of tariffs. The US introduced $200bn worth of tariffs on Chinese imports and Beijing responded with tariffs on $60bn worth of US products.
“Now that the United States has adopted such a huge trade restriction measure ... how can the negotiations proceed? It’s not an equal negotiation,” Wang said.
“If this continues, it will destroy in an instant the gains of the last four decades of China-US relations,” Wang told members of the US-China Business Council and National Committee on United States-China Relations.
The People's Republic also accused the US of “trade bullyism” and said they were intimidating other countries to submit to their will, according to a white paper on the issue published by the Chinese state council on Monday.
Wang said both sides should treat each other with sincerity and look for a way out from the current situation.
Asian stock markets were broadly down on Tuesday. Although the Nikkei in Tokyo was up slightly, the Shanghai Composite index dropped 0.5% and shares in Sydney were down 0.3%.
Jasper Lawler, analyst at London Capital Group, said: “Asian markets struggled as investors digested escalated tensions in the next chapter of the growing trade spat. The latest market moves highlight just how difficult it is to trade these escalating trade tensions.
“On the announcement of these latest tariffs the markets moved higher, given that the tariffs were lower than what traders had been expecting. Fast forward to the application of the “lower” tariffs and the market dives. The markets have tried hard to shrug off the implications of an escalating trade spat on global trade and growth but this is becoming harder with each fresh round of tariffs and will slowly but surely take its toll on investor sentiment.”