Economist Navarro to head new office: Alibaba returns to US fake goods blacklist
China has warned Donald Trump that “co-operation is the only correct choice” after the US president-elect tapped a China hawk to run a new White House trade policy office.
The appointment of Peter Navarro, a campaign adviser, to a formal White House post shocked Chinese officials and scholars who had hoped that Mr Trump would tone down his anti- Beijing rhetoric after assuming office.
A Harvard-trained economist and University of California Irvine professor, Mr Navarro is author of Death by China and other books painting the country as the US’s most dangerous adversary.
“Chinese officials had hoped that, as a businessman, Trump would be open to negotiating deals,” said Zhu Ning, a finance professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “But they have been surprised by his decision to appoint such a hawk to a key post.”
Adding to rising tensions, the US Trade Representative yesterday put Alibaba, China’s biggest ecommerce platform, back on its “notorious markets” blacklist of companies accused of being involved in the peddling of fake goods.
Hua Chunying, of the Chinese foreign ministry, said Beijing would monitor the policy positions of the incoming US administration. “As two major powers with broad mutual interests, co-operation is the only correct choice,” she said.
Speaking hours before the appointment of Mr Navarro, foreign minister Wang Yi told the People’s Daily, the ruling Communist party’s flagship newspaper, that China and the US faced “new, complicated and uncertain factors affecting bilateral relations”. He said the world’s two largest economies must respect each other’s “core interests”.
Cui Fan at the China Society of WTO Studies, a think-tank affiliated with the commerce ministry, warned that Beijing would respond to any unilateral action by the Trump administration. “China is preparing itself for US trade actions,” he said. “China will respond with counteractions of its own.”
China has been scrambling to assess Mr Trump’s stance since he took a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen this month, defying almost four decades of precedent. Under the One China policy, Washington has abstained from official interactions with the island, which Beijing regards as a rogue province.
Mr Trump has publicly criticised China’s currency policies and island fortifications in the South China Sea and questioned Washington’s commitment to the One China policy. The highest level contact between China and the Trump team came last week when Yang Jiechi, a top Chinese foreign policy official, met Michael Flynn, incoming national security adviser, in New York.
Additional reporting by Yuan Yang and Archie Zhang in Beijing
