(Recasts, adds comment from Xi, details)
By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING, May 15 (Reuters) - China will only be more open to
the world, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday, as he
denounced as "stupid" those who believe in cultural superiority,
in his first public address since trade tension with the United
States spiked last week.
China and the United States are locked in an escalating
trade war, with both 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
worth of U.S. goods, effective on June 1, in retaliation for a
U.S. decision on Friday to raise levies on $200 billion worth of
Chinese imports.
Xi was addressing a forum in Beijing organised by the
propaganda ministry, called the Conference on Dialogue of Asian
Civilisations. He made no direct reference to the trade tension
nor to the United States, focusing instead on presenting China
as a non-threatening country open to all.
Chinese civilisation was an "open system" that had
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 could 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
said.
"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."
SUSPICION
China has been particularly upset by comments reported in
the U.S. media last month by a State Department official who
said the United States was involved in "a fight with a really
different civilisation" when it came to China.
Xi told the forum that civilisations were not destined to
clash.
"It is stupid to believe that one's race and civilisation
are superior to others, and it is disastrous to wilfully reshape
or even replace other civilisations."
Xi offered no new concrete measures to 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 the opening session,
at which Xi spoke, including the presidents of Greece, Sri Lanka
and Singapore.
China has faced opposition to 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 far Western region of Xinjiang.