BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- China said Wednesday that advocating the decoupling of China and the United States, which was played up by a handful of people in the U.S., is extremely dangerous and irresponsible.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks at a press conference in response to a question regarding China-U.S. economic and trade relations.

The decoupling of China and the U.S. was advocated by a handful of people in the U.S. sticking to the Cold War mentality and zero-sum game, Geng said.

Such a view is against the essence of China-U.S. relations featuring cooperation and win-win results, ignores the public opinion on the friendly and close exchanges between the two countries, and goes against the trend of the times and is bound to fail, Geng said.

He said since the establishment of diplomatic relations 40 years ago, China and the United States have developed highly complementary and deeply integrated interest structure and mutually beneficial relations.

"Both countries have become each other's largest trading partner and important investment destinations," said Geng, adding that almost all major U.S. companies have businesses in China, and all states of the U.S. engage in cooperation with China.

The two countries have established 50 sister province/state relations and 227 sister-city relations, according to Geng.

"The U.S. has gained huge interests from China-U.S. economic and trade cooperation," said Geng, adding that in the year 2017, the sales revenue and profits of U.S.-funded firms in China exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars and 50 billion dollars, respectively.

Geng said that speaking of decoupling, one should first ask the opinion of those enterprises, and ordinary people from the two countries.

Geng said China and the U.S. are the world's two largest economic entities that hold an important position in global industrial, supply and value chains.

A forced decoupling of China and the U.S. would inevitably disrupt the current world economy chain, damage global industry division and trigger chaos of international markets and turmoil of financial markets, which is obviously against the will of all relevant parties, Geng said.

"We urge some Americans to reflect on their actions, abandon ideological stereotypes, and stop spreading prejudiced and old remarks," he said.

Geng expressed the hope that the U.S. will meet China half way, expand cooperation on the basis of mutual benefit, manage differences on the basis of mutual respect and jointly advance bilateral relations with coordination, cooperation and stability as the defining features to benefit the two peoples.