BEIJING: Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi said that Beijing is ready to work with the US to bring bilateral relations back on the right track.
Making the remarks at a press conference on Sunday, Wang said the two sides should follow through on the outcomes of the phone conversation between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart President Joe Biden on the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year last month, and set bilateral relations on a new path of healthy and steady growth, Xinhua news agency reported.
As two countries with different social systems, China and the US naturally have differences and disagreements, the Foreign Minister said.
"What matters most is to manage them effectively through candid communication to prevent strategic miscalculation and avoid conflict and confrontation," he said.
It is not surprising that there is competition between China and the US as their interests are intertwined, but the two sides should have healthy competition on the basis of fairness and equity, Wang said.
Beijing hopes that the US will meet China half way and remove all its unreasonable restrictions on bilateral cooperation as early as possible, and not create new obstacles, the State Councillor said, noting that Beijing is ready to work with Washington in fields including anti-pandemic fight, economic recovery and climate change.
Wang also said that China welcomed the US' return to the Paris Agreement and expects that Washington will "shoulder its responsibility and make its due contribution".
"We hope that renewed China-US cooperation on climate change will bring positive 'climate change' to the (bilateral) relations."
In the last two years, tensions between the world's two largest economies escalated. The former administration of US President Donald Trump had levied tariffs on billions of dollars' worth of Chinese goods, to which Beijing also responded with duties of its own. In January 2020, the countries reached a phase one agreement on trade that called for increased Chinese purchases of US goods and greater access to the Chinese financial market.
However, bilateral tensions again increased in the months since, amid the coronavirus pandemic after the Trump administration directly blamed China for the global crisis. (IANS)
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