Chinese envoy urges India-China economic cooperation to counter US tariffs

Chinese Ambassador Xu Feihong criticised Washington’s 50% tariffs on India as “unfair,” calling on New Delhi and Beijing to deepen economic ties to counter the challenge. He also stressed joint efforts against terrorism and strengthening bilateral cooperation.

New Delhi: China firmly opposes the Trump administration’s 50 per cent tariffs on India as it is “unfair and unreasonable” and New Delhi and Beijing should scale up economic ties to jointly counter the challenge, Chinese ambassador Xu Feihong said on Monday.

Xu also said that both India and China are victims of terrorism and Beijing stands ready to work with the international community, including New Delhi to combat the challenge.

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The Chinese envoy to India was responding to questions after delivering his speech at an event organised to mark the 80th anniversary of China’s victory against Japan.

Xu also said that important consensus was reached between India and China on the boundary issues and that bilateral relationship between the two sides has not been impacted by a third party, in an apparent reference to Pakistan. In his remarks, Xu was severely critical of the US tariff policy.

The US is using the tariffs as a kind of “weapon” to extract “exorbitant” costs from various countries and India and China, the two very important emerging economies, must cooperate with each other to navigate the situation, he said.

“The trade war (was) started by the US. International trade should complement each other and lead to mutually beneficial win-win cooperation. The US has long benefited from free trade. But now it is using the tariff as a kind of weapon or a tool,” he said.

“The US is imposing tariffs of up to 50 per cent on India. It is unfair, unreasonable, China firmly opposes it,” he said, adding India and China should jointly explore how to counter this “threat”.

The ambassador said the two countries should scale up cooperation in the economic and trade domain. “We have 2.8 billion people, we have mega-size economies, mega-size markets and we have hard working people. Our economies are complementary,” he said.

Xu also recalled Chinese President Xi Jinping’s remarks during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 31 on the margins of the SCO summit. “Xi said China and India are at a very special stage of development and as the two biggest and very important emerging economies, China and India should focus on development and promotion of mutual support, mutual complementarity and mutual success,” the envoy said.

“PM Modi said that India-China cooperation will make the 21st century a genuine Asian century. Both of them stressed the importance of economic cooperation between our two sides,” he said.

To a question, the Chinese envoy also said that both China and India are “victims of terrorism”. “We share common interests in the field of counter-terrorism. China and India have maintained communications on counter-terrorism through multilateral mechanisms such as the SCO, BRICS, and the Tianjin Declaration in which the (SCO) member states condemned terrorism in all its forms,” he said.

“China is always firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and stands ready to work together with the international community, including India, to advance the implementation of the global security initiative,” he said.