The telegraph
Sino-American relations: China calls for an end to trade restrictions and warns against interference
China’s Foreign Minister set the conditions for a resumption of Sino-American relations on Monday, asking the Biden government to remove tariffs on Chinese products and lift restrictions on Chinese technology companies. Wang Yi said Beijing is ready to reopen the dialogue with Washington, but stressed that it is the United States that needs to change its actions to put relations back on track. He warned the United States to stop “defaming” the Communist Party and to stop interfering in the issues of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet. The US should “remove unreasonable tariffs on Chinese products, lift its unilateral sanctions on Chinese companies and research and education institutes and abandon the irrational suppression of China’s technological progress” to create the “conditions necessary for China-US cooperation. “he said to a foreign ministerial forum in Beijing. Relations between Beijing and Washington fell to the worst level in decades during the Trump administration, which raised tariffs on Chinese imports and imposed bans or other restrictions on Chinese technology companies. It also angered Beijing by increasing US support for Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, and sanctioned Chinese authorities for rights abuses against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and the crackdown on Hong Kong. On Monday, Wang said the Trump administration and measures taken to “suppress and contain China” were the “root cause” of the worst relations between the two sides since establishing diplomatic relations in 1979. President Joe Biden signaled that he will keep the pressure on Beijing, telling his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in a phone call earlier this month that he is concerned about “Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices”, as well as his actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and movements each increasingly assertive towards Taiwan. Mr. Wang said that China “has no intention of challenging or replacing the United States” and said it is ready to work with the United States to address the Covid pandemic, climate change and the global economic recovery. Drew Thompson, a former US Department of Defense official with responsibility for China, said a restart in relations was “highly unlikely” when Chinese officials were not offering to change “any action on their part”. “Wang Yi and other recent speeches emphasized the actions the United States must take to restart relations, without any introspection or consideration of how China’s own actions led the United States to conclude that China is a threat and a strategic competitor,” “Demanding that the United States change without acknowledging US reciprocal concerns is a dead end for involvement,” said Thompson, a visiting researcher at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.