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Gearing up for Trump 2.0 era, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday cautioned there will be no winner in a tariff or tech wars between China and the United States and vowed that Beijing would firmly safeguard its interests.
"Tariff wars, trade wars and technology wars run counter to historical trends and economic laws, and there will be no winners," Xi said while meeting the heads of 10 major international organisations, including the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Beijing.
During the meeting, Xi stressed on China's principles for engaging with the United States.
"China will always insist on focusing on its own affairs and resolutely safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests. Meanwhile, China's determination to promote high-level opening up will not change," he said, according to the official media reports in Beijing.
Xi's comments came in the backdrop of US President-elect Donald Trump's remarks in an NBC interview that he 'got along very well' with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that the two leaders had 'communication as recently as this week'.
China did not confirm the conversations between Xi and Trump, who is set to take over power on January 20.
During his election campaign, Trump had threatened to impose 60 per cent on Chinese exports to the US and also warned of imposing 10 per cent more tariffs if Beijing fails to curb fentanyl, the drug 50 times more potent than heroin and regarded as the root cause for addiction in the US.
On Monday, China announced an investigation into US chipmaker Nvidia over suspected violations of the country's anti-monopoly law.
The investigation is widely seen as retaliation for Washington's latest curbs on the Chinese chip sector.
On China's economy which is facing headwinds of slowdown, Xi told the heads of major international economic organisations that he has full confidence to achieve this year's economic growth target of around five per cent and Beijing will continue to play its role as the biggest engine of world economic growth.
Xi said economies of all countries face their own difficulties.
All countries should work together to build an open world economy, be innovation-driven, seize important opportunities such as the digital economy, artificial intelligence and low-carbon technologies, create new sources of economic growth and support cross-border flows of knowledge, technology and human resources.
He said after more than 40 years of sustained and rapid development, China's economy has entered a stage of high-quality development and contributed about 30 per cent to world economic growth.