ISLAMABAD: Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong on Thursday said that Pakistan and China are strategic cooperative partners and as iron-clad brother, China stands ready to work with Pakistan to enhance our cooperation and take the high quality development of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects to ensure shaping a community of the shared future.
Talking to a group of journalists after addressing the participants of a symposium held here at the Chinese Embassy, the Ambassador said that China will always help Pakistan in holding its sovereignty and territorial integrity intact.
“We will deepen our development cooperation under the CPEC. We will strengthen security partnership with Pakistan. We will help implement Pakistan in its counterterrorism strategy and safeguarding its territorial integrity,” said the Chinese envoy.
He said that China will promote people-to-people ties.
“We will deliver 50,000 kits to Balochistan students and we also oversaw 3000 students to go to China for agriculture studies. We will like to take high quality building of CPEC to ensure shaping a community of shared future,” he said.
Responding to the questions about start of trade war by US President Donald Trump against China, Ambassador Jiang Zaidong said that in past 200 years history of the US, tariff has been (mis)used as a tool to bully other states.
“But the history is witness that tariff wars always failed to achieve their objectives. As I remember in 1930s, when tariff policy was implemented, the US economy was hit and the US trade volumes were wiped out. No one benefitted from tariff war. The current US administration calls tariff wars as most beautiful word in dictionary,” he said.
Amb Jiang said that the US economists warned that it could cost five million US citizens of their jobs and it could lead to economic crunch situation in the US.
“A Chinese saying goes that stealing a chicken may result in losing your own rice. I hope that the US people would resist this move but if they don’t, the US may be on the losing side,” he said.
The envoy said that it is very hard for China to understand how the US govt calculated tariff percentage.
“According to our calculations, if tariff is raised at 75 percent, it could block entire world trade. We believe the US wants to politicise and weaponise trade tariffs. There is no doubt that the US policy would have some negative impact on China’s economy but we have some plans in place to make adjustments,” he said.
He said that the US policy has backfired to boost its trade due to tariff war.
“This is a proven fact that China would not flinch from any unjust suppression. Moreover, the US economy has hurt more than Chinese economy did. China on one hand will secure its interests and on the other, it would promote Chinas super size markets in across the world,” he said.
Chinese envoy said that after the second world war, the international trade system was promoted by the US administration but now the same US admin is destroying trade rules it itself made.
He said that the international observer’s have warned that the US tariff war is destroying the world trade.
“As a major country, China will not allow world trade to slip back into world of jungle and rather, we will uphold the international rules of fairness and justice. We have seen that with China fighting back, the US was forced to step back and the US government suspended tariffs to 90 days, temporary pardoning some US electronic firms manufacturing products in China. We earned this room for discussion and will review with the US and will bring relief for smaller economies,” he said.
Amb Jiang said that China is ready to take its role as a major country to help world trade normalise.
“The bullying of US has proven that feeding the tiger with your own flesh is not wise and it would prove counterproductive in the near future too. I think Pakistan among other countries will join our ranks with China in maintaining justice. In Chinese, we say that those stand on the right path get help and those stand on wrong way fail to get help from others,” concluded the Chinese Ambassador.
