China's socialist market economy has a clear advantage in dealing with challenges and risks and the US will not be able to sustain the fight it has picked with China, head of China's banking and insurance regulator said on Thursday.

"Our economy has a relatively stronger tolerance. The socialist market economy has obvious institutional advantages in dealing with various difficulties and risks," Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said in an interview. "But this has nothing to do with so-called State capitalism."

Guo argued that China's foreign trade does not rely on a specific country or region because of its "all-round" opening up and that it has a complete industrial system and a massive market of 1.3 billion people.

"Our commodity market and job market are relatively flexible and our foreign-related economic sectors' ability to make flexible adjustment is more prominent," Guo said in the interview with Chinese financial newspaper Financial News, according to a transcript.

While Guo did not specifically mention the US, he was responding to a question about China's advantages in trade friction with the US.

His comments came a day before the US is scheduled to impose punitive tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday, which China has threatened to fight back against by slapping tariffs on $34 billion worth of US goods on the same day.

While reiterating China's longstanding position that it opposes a trade war and that a trade war would hurt all, Guo also suggested the US will not be able to sustain the trade war.

"Picking a trade war is not only an attack on the target country, but will also damage its own economy. This trade war will eventually be hard to carry on," Guo said.

He added that by attacking China's trade and investment, the US is also attacking companies from other countries, including many US ones.

Among the $34 billion worth of Chinese goods targeted by the US tariffs, $20 billion, or about 59 percent, are produced by foreign companies' subsidiaries in China, including many US companies, Gao Feng, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, told a press briefing.

Gao reiterated that China would not fire the first shot in trade tensions with the US, but will fight back immediately to safeguard its interests and those of the global multilateral trade system.

In the interview on Thursday, Guo, who is also the Party chief of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, also said that China's financial market and the exchange rate of its currency will be able to sustain any impact from the trade tension between China and the US.

Asked whether the China-US trade friction would negatively affect global financial markets, Guo pointed to the stability and resilience of the Chinese financial market and the yuan.

"Along with the steady improvement of the Chinese economy, the banking, insurance and securities industries are operating safely and stably," he said, adding that the yuan has after adjustment since last year entered a "reasonable" range of two-way fluctuation and strong fundamentals suggest that there is no possibility for depreciation.

"In recent years, some global speculators have tried to make a huge profit by shorting the yuan. It has been proven that they seriously misread the situation," he said.