As trade war bites, China's Xi preaches openness

By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING, May 15 (Reuters) - China has glorious history of
being open to the world and the country will only be more open,
President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday, in his first public
address since trade tensions with the United States spiked last
week.
Beijing and Washington are locked in an escalating trade
war, with both countries levying tariffs on each other's
imports. Just before Xi spoke the government reported
surprisingly weaker growth in retail sales and industrial output
for April. China on Monday announced higher tariffs on $60 billion of
U.S. goods, effective June 1, in retaliation for Washington's
decision on Friday to raise its own levies on $200 billion in
Chinese imports.
Addressing a forum in Beijing organised by China's
propaganda ministry, called the Conference on Dialogue of Asian
Civilisations, Xi made no direct reference to the trade
tensions, focusing instead on presenting China as a
non-threatening country open to all.
Chinese civilisation is an "open system" that has
continuously had exchanges and learned from other cultures,
including Buddhism, Marxism and Islam, Xi told the forum.
"Today's China is not only China's China. It is Asia's China
and the world's China. China in the future will take on an even
more open stance to embrace the world," he added.
No country can stand alone, Xi said, perhaps taking an
indirect swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First"
policy.
"Civilizations will lose vitality if countries go back to
isolation and cut themselves off from the rest of the world," Xi
added. "The people of Asian countries hope to distance
themselves from being closed, and hope that all countries will
adhere to the spirit of openness and promote policy
communication, connectivity and smooth trade."
Xi offered no new concrete measures to further open China
up, aside from proposing an Asia tourism promotion plan, and
even on that he gave no details.
Officials have billed the forum as part of a soft power push
to put a gentler face on China's growing might, though it only
attracted a handful of foreign leaders to attend the opening
session where Xi spoke, including the presidents of Greece, Sri
Lanka and Singapore.
China has faced pushback for some of its global ambitions,
mainly in the West but especially in the United States, where
there has been suspicion of Chinese technology, Xi's Belt and
Road Initiative to re-create the Old Silk Road, and
government-run Confucius Institutes to teach the Chinese
language.
China has also faced criticism for its tight cyber controls
- though forum organisers unblocked the internet for foreign
media - and for a controversial re-education campaign for
Muslims in its restive far Western region of Xinjiang.