BENGALURU: China has offered to go on a six-year buying spree to ramp up imports from the United States in order to reconfigure the relation between the two countries, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

By raising annual goods imports from the United States by a combined value of more than $1 trillion, China would seek to reduce its trade surplus, which last year stood at $323 billion, to zero by 2024, one of the people told Bloomberg.

If US President Donald Trump is re-elected next year, the trade gap would close by the end of his second term.

Halfway through a 90-day truce in the US-China trade war agreed to on Dec 1 when Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the G20 summit in Argentina, there have been few details provided of any progress made.

Data on Monday showed China’s exports unexpectedly fell the most in two years in December and imports also contracted, pointing to further weakness in the world’s second-largest economy in 2019 and deteriorating global demand.

Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2019