China says can't hold US trade talks with 'knife to the throat'

China said on Tuesday it was impossible to hold trade talks with the United States while Washington is imposing tariffs that are like “holding a knife to someone's throat”.

Speaking a day after Washington activated tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods, vice commerce minister Wang Shouwen said China is open to negotiations but that the two sides must treat each other “equally and with respect”. “Now that the US has adopted this type of large-scale trade restrictions, they're holding a knife to someone's throat. Under these circumstances, how can negotiations proceed?” Wang told a news conference.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had invited Chinese officials to hold new talks, but President Donald Trump's latest salvo -- and warnings that another $267 billion of goods are being lined up -- appear to have scuttled that effort.

Wang met US officials in Washington in August but there have been no high-level meetings between the world's top two economies for months. He said Tuesday the US measures “have made it impossible for the negotiations to proceed” and blamed the US for abandoning a consensus on trade that was struck in May, but was quickly followed by new US tariffs.

High-ranking officials from several Chinese government agencies held a press conference on Tuesday as Beijing rolled out a new white paper claiming to set the record straight on trade-related facts.

Fu Ziying, another vice minister of commerce, noted that some in the United States accuse Beijing of engaging in unfair competitive practices, causing the huge trade deficit between the two countries. “This is totally devoid of fact, groundless, and totally misleading,” he said, adding that American firms sold $700 billion worth of goods in China each year, earning more than $500 billion in profit.

- AFP