Xi rejects 'selfish' trade policies
Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country is locked in a high-stakes trade dispute with the United States, yesterday said China rejects "selfish, shortsighted" trade policies, and called for building an open global economy.
Xi did not mention the United States during a speech at a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional security bloc led by China and Russia.
The leaders of China and Russia Sunday praised the expansion of their regional security bloc at the summit which put on a show of unity in stark contrast to the acrimonious G7 meeting.
Xi Jinping gave the leaders of Pakistan and India a "special welcome" to their first summit of the SCO, in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao, since their countries joined the group last year.
"We reject selfish, shortsighted, closed, narrow policies, (we) uphold World Trade Organisation rules, support a multi-lateral trade system, and building an open world economy," Xi said in a speech.
Xi spoke hours after Trump said he was backing out of the Group of Seven communique, thwarting what appeared to be a fragile consensus on a trade dispute between Washington and its top allies.
"We must ... discard Cold War thinking, group confrontation; we object to acts of getting one's own absolute security at the cost of other countries' security," Xi said.
Founded in 2001, the SCO also includes the former Central Asian Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, whose country is an observer member, also attended the meeting as he seeks Chinese and Russian support following the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Tehran.
Addressing the SCO leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the addition of Pakistan and India means that the organisation "has become even stronger".
The show of unity was in marked contrast to the calamitous end to the Group of Seven meeting in Quebec City, after US President Donald Trump disowned a joint summit statement and lambasted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as "dishonest" and "weak".
Responding to criticism of Russia in the G7 statement, Putin told reporters that the group should "stop this creative babbling and shift to concrete issues related to real cooperation".
The G7 text made no mention of Russia being invited back into the group despite Trump's support for such a move. Russia was expelled in response to its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Putin did not miss an opportunity to thumb his nose at the club of leading industrialised democracies, saying that the combined purchasing power of the SCO outstripped the G7.
Xi touted security cooperation -- the original raison d'etre of the SCO -- and announced that China would open a 30 billion yuan ($4.7 billion) special lending facility within the bloc's interbank consortium.
Putin said trade and investment among SCO countries was growing and Russia and China would propose a Eurasian economic partnership for all member states.
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