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SHANGHAI (REUTERS) – Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged on Monday (Nov. 5) to lower tariffs, broaden market access and impedance to the United States and others.
The China International Import Expo, or CIIE, offers thousands of foreign companies together with Chinese buyers in a bid to demonstrate the world's second-largest economy.
In the future, China said it would accelerate the opening of the education, telecommunications and cultural sectors, while protecting foreign companies' interests and punishing violations of intellectual property rights.
He also said he expects China to import US $ 30 trillion (S $ 41 trillion) worth of goods and US $ 10 trillion worth of services in the next 15 years. Last year, Xi estimated that China would import US $ 24 trillion worth of goods over the coming 15 years.
"CIIE is a major initiative by China to pro-actively open up its market to the world," said Xi.
US President Donald Trump has railed against China for the sake of intellectual property.
Foreign business groups, too, have grown weary of Chinese reformers, and while opposing Trump's tariffs, they have longed that China would invite retaliation if it did not match the openness of its trading partners.
Xi said the expo showed China's desire to support global free trade, adding – without mentioning the United States – that countries must oppose protectionism.
He said "Multilateralism and the free trade system is under attack, factors of instability and uncertainty are numerous, and risks and obstacles are increasing".
"With the deepening development today of economic globalization, 'the weak falling prey to the strong' and 'winner is all' are dead-end alleys," he said.
Louis Kuijs, head of Asia Economics at Oxford Economics, said the speech was meaningful, if short on fresh initiatives.
"I do not think that it was necessary, but I guess I would take this assumption that China is very keen to be seen as continuing to open up and committing to that stance, he said.
China imported US $ 1.84 trillion of goods in 2017, up 16 percent, gold US $ 255 billion, from a year earlier. Of that total, China imported about US $ 130 billion from United States.
The Chinese government's top diplomat, State Councilor Wang Yi, said in March that China would import US $ 8 trillion of goods in the next five years.
FOCUS ON G20
Expectations had been low that it would have been great.
The European Union, which shares US concerns over China's trade practices, if not on the market, and on the level of the market, adding that it would not sign up to any political statement at the forum.
With little in the way of fresh policies from Xi on Monday, Trump at the G20 summit in Argentina at the end of the month.
"It seems like what (Xi) is actually doing it all the way to doing anything unilateral," said Scott Kennedy, a Chinese economic expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Now everything is focused on the G20." Trump has said that if a deal is not made with China, it could impose tariffs on another US $ 267 billion of Chinese imports into the United States.
On Monday, Trump said China wants to make a deal. "If we can make the right deal, we will do it, we will not do it," he told supporters on a conference call.
In China, China's biggest trade show, the Canton Fair in October, dropped 30.3 percent from a year earlier, the fair's China Foreign Trade Center said.
Presidents or prime ministers from 17 countries were set to attend the exhibition, ranging from Russia and Pakistan to the Cook Islands, though none from major Western nations. Government officials were also coming, but no senior US officials were expected to attend.
Swiss President Alain Berset did not make the trip to China, despite being announced by China's foreign ministry last week. The Swiss government said in a statement to Reuters on Sunday that it has been confirmed.
Some Western diplomats and businesses have been quietly critical of the expo, arguing it is window dressing to what they see in Beijing's long-standing trade abuses.
Exhibitors from around 140 countries and regions will be 404 from Japan, the most of any country. From the United States, some 136 exhibitors will be waiting, including Google, Dell Inc., Ford and General Electric.
A handful of countries are being represented by a single exhibitor selling one product.
For Iraq, it's crude oil. Iran, saffron. Chad is selling bauxite. Tiny São Tomé is selling package holidays.
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