Experts urge US to bolster trade ties with China

The United States should step up efforts to create favorable conditions to expand trade cooperation with China, Chinese officials and experts said on Thursday.

A win-win approach to bilateral trade based on mutual respect will benefit not only the two countries but also the rest of the world, they said.

The remarks came after some US officials accused China of failing to fully fulfill commitments to the phase-1 trade agreement signed between the two countries in early 2020.

Gao Feng, spokesman of China's Ministry of Commerce, said at an online media briefing on Thursday: "The phase-1 agreement between China and the US is beneficial to both countries and the world. China has worked hard to offset multiple challenging factors such as the shock from COVID-19, global economic recession and clogged supply chains, to promote joint implementation of the agreement by both sides since the agreement came into effect.

"China hopes the US will remove additional tariffs on Chinese products and containment measures soon to create favorable conditions for the two sides to expand trade cooperation."

In 2021, China-US trade surged by 20 percent to 4.88 trillion yuan ($770 billion), according to China's Customs data.

US data confirmed the country's exports to China grew more than 21 percent to a record $151 billion in 2021.

Huo Jianguo, vice-chairman of the Beijing-based China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, said China and the US have strong complementarity in trade, and they should create better conditions together to expand economic and trade cooperation based on mutual respect and equality.

Additional US tariffs on Chinese imports have proved to be ineffective in reducing the overall US trade deficit. Worse, they ended up increasing domestic prices in the US, Huo said.

It is against the spirit of equality for the US to ask China to expand general imports from the US while restricting both high-tech exports from the US to China and Chinese enterprise investment activities in the US.

"The tightening export control by the US side, as well as the US government's suppression of Chinese enterprises, have impeded normal economic and trade cooperation between the two countries, although China has been working to increase imports from the US," he said.

Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said surging US product prices and COVID-related shipment obstacles and supply chain bottlenecks have made US products less appealing to Chinese enterprises.

As the bilateral trade deal states, the Chinese government cannot distort market mechanisms and force Chinese enterprises to buy US goods, he said.