Agreeing to meet with Trump’s administration to discuss trade, China seeks to launch itself as a superpower competition that has surpassed the global financial system and cause fears of recession.
For weeks, China has publicly stated that it would not participate in trade talks with the United States under pressure, refusing to “kneel” and compromise with a “murder”. She insisted that Washington should first reduce its invoices in China as a prerequisite for negotiations.
On Wednesday, Beijing said that he would eventually come to the table, saying that his leading employee, Lifeng, will meet with Finance Minister Scott Bessent in Switzerland this week. However, he maintained a harsh stance, warning Washington against the use of talks as “a smoke screen to continue coercion and blackmail”.
The Chinese government said it had come to this decision “based on the full examination of global expectations, interests of China and US industry and consumers”, suggesting that it did so much for the greatest good.
“China is trying to frame itself as the responsible party, but it is still a pretty tough tone: better to behave yourself in these conversations,” said Yun Sun, a China analyst at Stimson.
But the move is still a softening of China’s attitude, at a time when financial data showed that the Brinkmanship trade hit the two countries’ economies.
Trump’s decision to increase invoices to Chinese goods imported to the United States by 145 % and China’s response to hiking its own invoices for US goods to 125 % has effectively entered all transactions between the two countries in recent weeks.
Chinese factories have been hit by the steak slowdown of activity in more than a year, and Chinese goods missions to the United States have sank, causing a wave of retailers on shortcomings. The US economy shrunk during the first three months of the year and companies destroyed growth forecasts.
Both the United States and China seem to be interested in reducing invoices, but none wanted to make the original concession. It also remains unclear whether, or how quickly, the two countries could reach any kind of agreement or what the details could be.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday night, Mr Bessent said he expected a meeting with Swiss Chinese officials would focus on escalating rather than any major agreement.
“We have to escalate before we can move on,” Mr Bessent said.
For its part, China wants to show that it will come to the negotiations from a position of power, although the US had not first canceled the invoices as it had requested in Beijing. In recent days he has repeatedly said that US officials had arrived for talks and that he had examined the request.
“The Chinese are trying to avoid the image that the Chinese were willing to speak,” Ms. Sun.
Chinese officials will probably treat commercial talks as a mission mission.
“The Chinese want to know what Donald Trump really is, and you can only take it with direct conversations,” said Wang Xiangwei, an associate professor of journalism at Hong Kong’s Baptist University.
So far, for example, it was not quite clear in Beijing, which Trump’s officials were responsible for future negotiations with China, Mr Wang said.
Part of the challenge in dealing with Trump’s administration in trade is that the direction of politics seems to be different depending on who is talking. Peter Navarro, a senior White House Commerce Advisor and architect of many of the commercial plans of President Trump, defended invoices as necessary, while Mr Bessent said the US was willing to negotiate with countries.
Even when Trump’s administration seemed more willing to find an off-ramp about the obstacle, there were still some questions about what the administration would play during the talks, which Mr Bessent told Fox News will take place on Saturday and Sunday.
China said that Mr was to be in Geneva from Friday to Monday for meetings with Swiss leaders and that while he was there he would also meet Mr Bessent. Trump’s administration has said that Jamieson Greer, the US Commercial spokesman, will also participate in meetings, though China did not mention Mr Greer in her own statements about talks.
Discovering what Mr Trump wants from China and what he is willing to admit the negotiations would be useful for Beijing as he calculates his answer. China is also trying to persuade other countries not to pressure a pressure from Trump’s efforts to isolate China by imposing their own invoices on Chinese products or disconnecting from Chinese construction.
For Beijing, lowering temperatures without seem weak in front of Mr Trump’s invoices could help his own efforts to revitalize his economy. Chinese officials are under pressure at home from the fall of such a multi -year crisis of ownership that has eliminated the savings of many families, along with broader commercial tensions with countries outside the United States.
China’s central bank and its financial regulatory authorities on Wednesday took their biggest policy measures to protect the economy from the trade war, moving the economy with a series of steps to facilitate banks to lend money and spend people.
The “Trump’s pricing policies of Trump have a serious blow to the international economic and commercial class, have caused significant upheavals in international financial markets and exerted significant pressure on the domestic capital market,” said Wu Qing, China’s stock regulator.
The Chinese side also comes to talks encouraged by the knowledge that Mr Trump has blinked in front of a sharp sale in US government bond markets and the wider turmoil of the financial market. Intermediate elections in the United States could put some pressure on Mr Trump to reduce or reduce invoices if consumer prices rise as a result of lack of goods.
The Chinese “still have the upper hand, but their economy is slowing,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior consultant at the Washington Research Team. “If they have the overall administration of Trump, they could end up looking for partners to stop the global economy.”
Zixu wang They contributed reports.
