GENEVA: The United States should “take the gun off” China’s head and start keeping its word in order to have useful talks on ending a trade war, Beijing’s deputy commerce minister said on Thursday.

Wang Shouwen, representing China during the country’s policy review at the World Trade Organisation this week, noted that the US “started the war” which has seen escalating threats to slap reciprocal tariffs on goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

“We have had talks and those talks produced good progress but this progress was ignored by one party and that party went ahead with a trade war,” Wang told reporters in Geneva.

Asked what conditions would be necessary for negotiations on easing the conflict, he said: “For any talk to be successful, one party needs to take the gun off the head of the other party.

“And for any talk to be useful, one party needs to be keeping its words. If one side keeps chopping and changing all the time the talk would be pointless,” he added.

So far, the two powers have only imposed tariffs on $34 billion worth of each others goods.

But Washington on Tuesday threatened to target an additional $200bn in imports and China immediately vowed to retaliate.

Senior members of President Donald Trump’s Republican party have condemned the spiralling trade row and called for face-to-face talks with Beijing.

Wang called the US a “trade bully” and said Trump’s conduct was “against the interest of the US businesses, the US consumers (and) US workers.” Among Washington’s many grievances regarding Chinese trade are charges that the WTO treats China too kindly.

Trump’s administration insists the 164-member body allows China to claim benefits that should be only reserved for the world’s poorest nations and fails to punish its other misconduct.

On Wednesday, the US envoy to the WTO Dennis Shea said it was time for a “reckoning” over China’s membership and that without sweeping reform the WTO will prove unable to contain China and ultimately become an irrelevant.

Wang countered on Thursday that China was open to WTO reform, but mocked Shea’s “alarmist point of view.”

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2018