China's Foreign Minister: Beijing Will Counter U.S. Trade Pressure

TaiwanPlus News

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has lashed out at recent U.S. tariffs, saying it's "not how a responsible major country behaves." Wang spoke at China's key annual political meeting, giving a glimpse into the leadership's thinking on foreign policy.

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00:00China's foreign minister says his country will keep retaliating against

00:04US tariffs on its goods. Wang Yi made the comments on the sidelines of Beijing's

00:09key political meeting known as the two sessions. Louise Wong has been following

00:13developments from our newsroom here in Taipei. Louise, did Wang's comments tell

00:18us anything new about China's foreign policy priorities? Well this is a rare

00:25press conference by China's foreign ministry. It happens once a year and it

00:30doesn't really give us any chance to see the foreign minister off

00:33guard, all the questions are known in advance, but it does give us an

00:38opportunity to see what China's foreign policy priorities are. And what's

00:45interesting about this year is, let's just think of the context to this speech,

00:51we're in a remarkable geopolitical situation. In his first six weeks back

00:56in power, US President Donald Trump has upended foreign policy from Washington.

01:04He's been mending diplomatic ties with Moscow and he stunned the US's

01:10traditional allies with tariffs on them as well, not just China. So the message

01:17Wang Yi really wanted to give today I feel at his press conference is that

01:22China is a stable global power and I think that's targeted at Europe, he wants

01:28to improve relations with the European Union and also the global south. Beijing

01:33has long seen itself as a leader there. Now of course everyone was watching to

01:39see what he would say about the US given the tit-for-tat tariffs that are going

01:44on and Wang struck his normal stern tone, he berated Washington, he said it's

01:52not how a responsible major country behaves and he said China will

01:58resolutely counter any trade pressure that it that it faces from the US. But he

02:04did also leave open a door, he says there's room for cooperation between the

02:10two countries. Now I think what's notable is that he didn't mention Donald

02:16Trump by name because despite all his tough talk, Beijing does want to leave

02:23open a door for negotiations, they hope to see these tariffs rolled back and we

02:30also have to bear in mind that while Donald Trump has been busy with tariffs,

02:36domestic policy, with some foreign policy, Beijing is still waiting to see what he

02:42says not just on tariffs but waiting for him to articulate a broader strategy on

02:48China for how he plans to treat China during his time in power.

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