The European Union’s (EU) trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič held talks with senior economic officials in Beijing on Thursday as a top Chinese leader called for global co-operation against protectionism.
Ding Xuexiang, the sixth-ranking figure in the Communist Party hierarchy, told the Boao Forum for Asia that China would open wider to the world regardless of external events.
“We should jointly safeguard the free trade system, uphold open regionalism and firmly oppose trade and investment protectionism,” he told an audience of Asian political leaders, diplomats and figures from business at the forum on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.
Mr Sefcovic arrived in Beijing fresh from talks with United States trade officials in an attempt to avoid steep tariffs on EU goods Donald Trump has promised to impose on April 2, on top of the 25 per cent tariffs on imported cars the president announced on Wednesday.
The commissioner was due to meet China’s vice-premier He Lifeng, who also heads the Communist Party’s commission on economic policy, and customs minister sun Meijun.
Mr Sefcovic’s talks in Beijing come within days of visits by the foreign ministers of France and Portugal and ahead of an expected visit by Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez.
China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said after his meeting with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot on Thursday that Beijing and Paris had agreed to hold high level dialogues on strategic, economic, financial and cultural issues this year.
The Boao Forum for Asia, a four-day annual meeting of Asian politicians, diplomats and business figures on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, was overshadowed by the threat of US tariffs and the prospect of a global trade war.
Economist Stephen Roach warned that April 2nd, which Trump has dubbed “Liberation Day” could go down in history as the day globalisation ended, just like the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act after which global trade contracted by 60 per cent.
“My fear is that the United States has lost its way right now. And as once the champion and proud leader of the free world, we are in the process of challenging ourselves from within in terms of the rule of law, challenging the world not just through tariffs and a broad-based, reciprocal action one week from today, but also tearing up our alliances, driving a wedge between ourselves and Europe, expressing territorial ambitions, the likes of which we have never seen in the United States in the post-second world War era, setting our sights on Greenland, the Panama Canal, the Gaza Strip, and most shockingly, Canada,” he said.
“Who are we? I would say, quite honestly, quite candidly, that the United States is in the early stages of what you in China know all too well, painfully so, as the Cultural Revolution.
“Your Cultural Revolution was devastating for your country, but of course, it set the stage for reforms and opening up, but it had no impacts on the rest of the world. Our Cultural Revolution could well be devastating internally, but with profound impacts on the rest of the world. In that respect, it’s likely to be more of a big event for globalisation.”
