Q: On the night of June 15 Beijing time, the Office of US Trade Representative (USTR) published a list of Chinese goods subject to additional tariffs. What's your comment?

A: I have to stress that China and the US have conducted several rounds of negotiations in an attempt to resolve our differences and achieve win-win results. It is deeply regrettable that in disregard of the consensus between the two sides, the US has demonstrated flip-flops and ignited a trade war. This move not only hurts bilateral interests, but also undermines world trade order. The Chinese side firmly opposes that.

China doesn't want a trade war. However, confronted by such short-sighted act that hurts both US itself and others, China has no choice but to fight back forcefully, to firmly safeguard the interests of the nation and its people and uphold economic globalization and the multilateral trading system. We will immediately take tariff measures of the same scale and intensity. All economic and trade outcomes of the previous talks will now lose effect.

Waging a trade war doesn't conform to global interests nowadays. We call on all countries to take collective actions to firmly curb such outdated and regressive move and steadfastly safeguard the common interests of the mankind.