Xi calls on Starbucks to help promote China-US ties

President Xi Jinping has encouraged the United States company Starbucks to play a positive role in promoting China-US economic and trade cooperation and bilateral ties.

Xi made the remark in a reply letter to Howard Schultz, Starbucks Corp chairman emeritus. The letter, dated Jan 6, was made public on Thursday.

Xi said in his reply letter that under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the 1.4 billion Chinese people have made long-term and arduous efforts to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and pursue socialist modernization.

The new journey embarked upon by China of fully building a modern socialist country will provide broader space for enterprises from across the world, including Starbucks and other US companies, to develop in China, Xi said.

The president expressed hope that the world's largest coffeehouse chain and Schultz himself will make efforts to promote China-US economic and trade cooperation as well as bilateral relations.

In his letter to Xi earlier, Schultz congratulated China on the upcoming completion of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects under Xi's leadership, and expressed his respect for the Chinese people and Chinese culture.

The exchange of letters between Xi and Schultz came as China-US relations have encountered unprecedented difficulties in recent years.

China has attributed the deterioration of bilateral ties to the serious misconceptions of US policymakers about China. Some US politicians tried to decouple with China and tried every means to suppress Chinese companies like Huawei and harm normal people-to-people exchanges as well as economic and trade cooperation between Chinese and US companies.

Beijing has insisted that it wants to develop a relationship with the US based on coordination, cooperation and stability in the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.

Speaking to Chinese media earlier this month, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China-US relations have come to a new crossroads and a new window of hope is opening. "We hope that the next US administration will return to a sensible approach, resume dialogue with China, restore normalcy to the bilateral relations and restart cooperation."

Despite the worsening of their ties, trade between China and the US rose last year, amounting to more than $586 billion, up 8.3 percent year-on-year, according to the General Administration of Customs.