Ahead of Trump's return, China’s Xi calls for embracing cooperation

ISTANBUL

China’s President Xi Jinping Tuesday called for embracing global solidarity and cooperation, weeks ahead of former US President Donald Trump's return to the White House.

“Humanity is a closely entwined community with a shared future. Countries are not riding separately in some 190 small boats, but are rather all in a giant ship on which their shared destiny hinges,” Xi told leaders of major international economic organizations in Beijing.

“As such,” Xi added, “they should see each other’s development as opportunities rather than challenges, and treat each other as partners rather than rivals.”

“Global solidarity, cooperation, mutual benefit, and win-win should become the defining theme of our times,” said the Chinese president.

Beijing has hosted the leaders of top global financial institutions since Sunday for the so-called 1+10 Dialogue.

The participants included representatives from the New Development Bank, World Bank, and World Trade Organization, as well as the International Monetary Fund.

Xi’s call for cooperation came as US President-elect Trump has vowed to raise high tariffs on Chinese imports.

During his first term, Trump slammed tariffs on Chinese goods, triggering a trade war between the world's top two economies.

However, Xi said Tuesday: “China will continue to actively support the work of international organizations and work with them to advance an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, and build a just world of common development.”

Besides tariffs, the US since the first Trump era has also taken measures to restrict tech transfers to China.

Trump is set to take oath on Jan. 20 after winning a landslide in the Nov. 5 presidential elections, becoming the second US president to win a non-consecutive second term.

"China hopes the United States will work with China to push bilateral relations toward a steady, healthy, and sustainable direction," Xi told the leaders of the global financial institutions.

"Tariff wars, trade wars, and sci-tech wars go against the trend of history and the laws of economics, and there will be no winners," Xi said, adding that Beijing was "willing to maintain dialogue, expand cooperation, and manage differences" with the US government.

Soon after Trump's win, Xi spoke to the president-elect, telling him that China and the US would “benefit from cooperation and lose from confrontation."

Xi also told Trump that the two countries should properly manage their differences and "find a way to get along in a new era," adding that a stable, healthy, and sustainable China-US relationship "is in the common interests of the two countries and the expectations of the international community."