Facts speak louder than words ——The U.S. has benefited enormously from China’s reform and opening-up

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The U.S. claimed that as China once profited a lot from China-U.S. trade, the China-U.S. trade agreement must be beneficial to the U.S. One fundamental basis of the U.S. government escalating trade friction is that it helped China join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and promoted China’s fast economic and export growth, while it suffered huge deficits in trade with China and unemployment. The U.S. has done its best to add tariffs and limit technologies in order to force China to make a comprehensive concession.

Facts tell us all the U.S. argument above has not a leg to stand on.

China’s accession to the WTO undoubtedly tremendously promoted its reform and opening-up and the development of its economy and foreign trade, but China’s economy began to take off in 1978 when it started the reform and opening up instead of after entering the WTO. It is just an important part of the reform and opening-up, and the growth after its accession to the WTO was also the continuation on the basis of past growth.

After its WTO accession, China kept fast growth in exports to the U.S., which provided a huge market for Chinese products. U.S. enterprises’ investments in China promoted China’s reform and opening-up and industrial development. China also provided huge business opportunities for U.S. transnational corporations. It is hard for U.S. high-tech companies to accumulate enough funds for research and development and keep their leading position in the world without the big amount of profits from the China market. Therefore, China’s accession to the WTO was beneficial to the two sides.

The U.S. takes the huge trade deficits as the main excuse for launching trade friction and adding tariffs comprehensively, which is totally nonsense. For instance, in 2018, many parts of the 539.5 billion U.S. dollars of Chinese exports to the U.S. were paid to other suppliers on the industry chain, rather than end up in China's pocket.

Is there any “fair trade” where one country adds tariffs to stop so-called unfair deficits in the world? The U.S. is misleading public opinion by imposing tariffs and forcing China to engage in "fair trade" on the pretext of trade deficits. It has no support in economics, and is very harmful.

The view that the U.S. suffers losses has no factual and economic basis, is just made up by the U.S. government to contain China and try to benefit from a trade agreement that is in favor of the U.S. China owes nothing to the U.S. Therefore, the China-U.S. trade negotiation should be based on equality and mutual benefit in accordance with WTO rules, instead of such rhetorical non-sense. Otherwise, there is no second path.

Contributed by He Weiwen for Guangming Daily

Translated by Zhang Zhou