China today warned that a trade confrontation with the US could damage one of the world's largest bilateral ties after US President-elect Donald Trump appointed Beijing's bitter critic for the top post in his economic team.
"China-US cooperation is interdependent, confrontation would only hurt both sides," Shen Danyang, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), said here, adding China is willing to further expand bilateral trade with the US.
Shen's comments came as concerns mount over a potential confrontational China-US trade relationship, sparked by the election and recent moves of trade-bashing Trump, who nominated Beijing's critic Peter Navarro for top trade job, state-run Global Times reported.
Navarro, who wrote a book called 'Death by China', will lead the newly created White House National Trade Council.
The appointment of Navarro, a staunch critic of China raised eyebrows here coming in the backdrop of Trump's questioning One-China policy after his unprecedented call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and his tweet, "Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into".
Navarro's appointment as head of the trade council has added more fuel to concerns that China-US bilateral trade will suffer under a Trump administration, with the outside threat of a full-blown trade war, a report in the Global Times said.
With about USD 600 billion bilateral trade, US is China's top trade partner. China's exports to the US last year totalled to USD 598 billion, imports USD 116 billion.
The US debt to China till September this year is about USD 1.157 trillion, which is 30 per cent of US treasury bills, notes and bonds held by foreign countries.
Chinese officials apprehend trade wars between the countries if Trump pursues hardline policy towards China, specially to strengthen its currency yuan, which weakened by 7 per cent this year.
US also alleges that China is weakening yuan to get better returns on its declining exports.
However, the MOFCOM spokesman expressed optimism about the future of China-US trade relations, saying it is too early at this point in time to predict whether or not China-US trade will continue to decline.
"Trade complementarity between China and the US is strong, no matter how the US government changes, the mutually beneficial and complementary characteristics in China-US trade won't change," Shen said.
In scathing editorial, Global Times said "Trump's Navarro pick is regarded as a signal that he will take more aggressive actions to promote his American interests first agenda. It's likely that the US will adopt reckless trade protectionist policies in future, causing changes to the pattern of the benefits distribution between the US and other countries," it said.
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