Cui Tiankai spoke less than a week before Donald Trump arrives in Asia for a two-week trip that will include bilateral meetings with counterpart Xi Jinping
China and the US will achieve “significant outcomes” on economic and trade issues and deepen cooperation towards containing the North Korean nuclear threat when President Donald Trump meets President Xi Jinping next month in Beijing, China’s ambassador to the US said in Washington.
At the same time, Ambassador Cui Tiankai warned in a press briefing at the Chinese embassy that nobody would “be able to contain China” – a reference to the Trump administration’s intention to help India balance China’s power in the Asia-Pacific region.
“I’m quite confident there will be significant outcomes on the economic and trade fronts,” Cui told reporters. A trade surplus, “in the long run, will not help China’s economy. It might even hurt China’s economy. We want more balanced trade relations with other countries.”
Cui said he expected Xi and Trump to reach more agreements on removing nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula and give “clear guidance on how two countries could handle this issue together”.
When asked whether Trump’s Asian policy, which advocates “a free and open Indo-Pacific”, and the US’s proposed advanced arms sales to India constituted a containment strategy, Cui said: “I don’t think anybody would be able to contain China”.
Cui’s comments came a week before Trump embarks on his first state visit to China – part of a 12-day Asian trip beginning on Friday. Trump will arrive in Beijing on November 8 after stopping in Japan and South Korea, two US allies.
Calling the Beijing leg of Trump’s trip “very important”, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sounded cautious about agreements related to limits on US access to Chinese markets when he addressed the New York Economic Club last week. Ross said addressing US complaints around intellectual property rights, “forced localisation, and forced technology transfers… are very important issues that are going to take a little time to resolve”.
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“It’s important to think about how far are private companies willing to go in compromising in order to keep the Chinese market accessible to them,” Annelise Riles, a professor of Far East legal studies at Cornell Law School, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. Riles focuses on “the transnational dimensions of law, markets and culture”.
“They’re willing to make big sacrifices in terms of giving the government access to the data of their users and giving the government access to their technology; and so, to the extent that private companies are willing to make sacrifices, China doesn’t have to.”
Trump is expected to take part in the events of a typical state visit, including reviewing a military guard of honour, official talks, a banquet and “some special arrangements” for Trump and his family, according to the Chinese embassy.
