Photo: IC

Top leaders from China and the US held a virtual summit on Tuesday Beijing time. The longer-than-expected meeting affirmed the mutual willingness of both sides to deal with differences and ease tensions, demonstrating a positive attitude towards cooperation across many areas.

China-US relationship is one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world. China regards the US as an important partner. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two more than 40 years ago, bilateral economic and trade relations have developed rapidly. Impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, the growth rate of the global economy dropped sharply, but China-US trade has shown a positive trend.

In the first three quarters of 2021, bilateral trade in goods between China and the US stood at $543 billion, a year-on-year increase of 35.4 percent. Among these numbers, China's exports to the US reached $412 billion, up 32.9 percent year-on-year; China's imports from the US were $132 billion, up 43.5 percent.

In terms of investment, as of the end of 2020, China's stock of direct investment in the US was $80 billion. The US is the fourth largest market for China's foreign direct investment. China has set up nearly 5,400 companies in the US, creating more than 110,000 local jobs. Chinese companies have made a great contribution to the recovery of the US economy.

However, since President Joe Biden came to power in January, instead of suspending arbitrary economic and trade repressions against China, the new administration has continuously ramped up its sanctions against China, and the risks facing China-US economic and trade relations have even escalated.

The US continues to politicize economic and trade issues while continuing to abuse the notion of "national security" to suppress Chinese companies. In fact, Chinese companies have strictly abided by international rules and US laws. 

Many US government departments have concocted lists of sanctions against a slew of Chinese companies, which created great obstacles for normal business operations. The US' suppression of companies and its discriminatory measures have caused Chinese companies to suffer a variety of unfair treatments in the US market, and the companies' confidence in US business environment is being eroded. 

In fact, the cooperation between China and the US is always greater than competition, and there is greater room for expanding their cooperation in a variety of fields. 

China and the US have recently vowed to cooperate to tackle the global "climate change crisis," making a commitment to taking "concrete actions in the 2020s" to reduce emissions in line with the aims of the 2015 Paris climate accord, proposing to jointly develop renewable energy and green energy storage technologies. 

In terms of maintaining stability of the global supply chain, the current logjam at the ports has caused many problems in the US, such as shortages of raw materials and labor, logistics bottlenecks, and low inventory of consumer goods. 

As the largest developing country and developed country in the world, China and the US have close economic ties and intertwined industrial supply chains. Both sides should strengthen their supply chain cooperation to jointly promote global economic recovery.

The US should listen attentively to the voices and demands of Chinese companies, abandon the demonstrably ill-intended practice of politicizing economic and trade issues, stop abusing and generalizing national security concept to suppress Chinese companies, lower the threshold for Chinese companies and products to enter the US, treat Chinese companies fairly, and give full play to Chinese companies' important role in assisting economic recovery in the US.

The author is deputy director of department of market research, Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn