China “blinks” in response to US trade threats is fake news

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2018 in Boao, south China's Hainan Province, April 10, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

China’s reform and opening up is an established strategy. The new phase of opening-up measures announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday at the Boao Forum for Asia should not be mistaken as concessions aimed at defusing a looming trade war.

China’s pledges to significantly broaden market access, strengthen protection of intellectual property rights, and expand imports have long been arranged, and are nothing new.

Despite this fact, some people think that China’s long-arranged plans are “concessions” to US President Donald Trump. For example, Larry Kudlow, White House chief economic adviser, argued on a radio talk show that Trump’s threats are working on China. When asked if the Chinese side “blinked,” Kudlow responded that China “did a lot more than blink” and “may have blinked three times.”

China’s new measures for expanding reform and opening up are based on China’s own development needs, and have nothing to do with the current trade frictions. To say that the new measures are a response to the current trade tensions between the United States and China or that China “blinked” is wishful thinking.

It should be understood that China will open up its door even wider to the world, but it will never do so under pressure from outside countries.

To further open up the country’s economy, China must stand firm against the rising tide of protectionism. That is to say that China will open even wider to the world, but it will do so in accordance with its own interests and at its own pace. China will never open at the expense of its own interests, and it is ridiculous to expect China to swing its doors wide open under pressure from outside countries.

The world is clear-eyed about who is embracing openness and who is clinging onto Cold War and zero-sum mentalities. At the core, the trade tensions between the United States and China are a conflict between unilateralism and multilateralism, and between protectionism and free trade.

The world will no doubt benefit from China’s new era of openness, but the new measures will not apply to those countries that violate the rules of the World Trade Organization and frequently launch trade wars against other countries.

The “concessions” theory is fake news, and this kind of reckless ignorance should be put to rest.