China does not want to remove the United States as the leader of the world but expects that the US would “remove all unreasonable restrictions”, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in New York on Tuesday.

This remark assumes importance because of the ongoing and escalating trade war between the two countries – which are also the two largest economies of the world, over US demands of lowering its trade deficit with China and for greater access to the Chinese market for American companies, among others.

The nets round of trade negotiations, which are slated to begin in Washington in early October, is expected by Wang to “produce a positive outcome”. He also stressed on the economic advantages and opportunities that the US would have by working closely with China.

“China-U.S. relations today have once again come to a cross roads,” Wang said, through a translator of his Mandarin-language during a dinner that was co-hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and The US-China Business Council.

“While China opens wider to the U.S. and the rest of the world, we expect the U.S. to do the same to China and remove all unreasonable restrictions,” Wang said. “In a word, China’s efforts and achievements of reform and opening up in the past several decades have been widely recognized. They should not be deliberately ignored or denied.”

There are often allegations by foreign companies that they are forced to transfer technology to domestic Chinese companies in the name of joint ventures which is mandatory for foreign companies to do business in China in many sectors. There are also complaints of restrictions of access to many industries in China for foreign companies.

An example of this is the case of Mastercard and Visa that have been unable to penetrate the Chinese market where as the Chinese state controlled UnionPay has aggressively expanded to many parts of the world. Other US companies such as the search engine giant Google is completely banned from the Chinese market.

“The trade frictions between China and the U.S. in the last year have inflicted losses on both countries, losses that should not have happened,” Wang said, noting both sides should “explore new areas of cooperation.”

The trade war has seen both the countries imposing tariffs on each other’s products worth billions of dollars. The Chinese tech giant Huawei has been caught in the cross wire of the trade war and the company was banned in May by the US Commerce Department.

International criticism of human rights violations in Xinjiang by the Chinese government were also refuted by Wang and said that the actions taken by the regional government were aimed to stop emergence of terrorism there.

Wang further talks about the massive infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, and said that it is “not targeted at the U.S. … but there should be no attempts to discredit or undermine it.”

Taiwanese independence would not be allowed by China, the foreign minister emphasized, and stressed that Beijing will strive “to maintain Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability is to reject violence.”

(Adapted from CNBC.com)

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