BEIJING: Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned Monday that protectionism \u201cleads nowhere\u201d and that a trade war would have \u201cno winners,\u201d state media said, as he was due to kick off a tour of Southeast Asia with a visit to Vietnam.
\nXi\u2019s first overseas trip of the year will see him visit Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia as Beijing seeks to tighten regional trade ties and offset the impact of huge tariffs unleashed by his US counterpart Donald Trump.
\nHe will meet his three Southeast Asian counterparts on a tour that \u201cbears major importance\u201d for the broader region, Beijing has said.
\nWriting in an article published Monday in Vietnam\u2019s major Nhan Dan newspaper, Xi urged the two countries to \u201cresolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and open and cooperative international environment,\u201d Beijing\u2019s Xinhua News Agency said.
\nHe also reiterated Beijing\u2019s line that a \u201ctrade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere,\u201d the agency added.
\nBeijing is trying to present itself as a stable alternative to an erratic Trump, who announced \u2014 and then mostly reversed \u2014 sweeping tariffs this month that sent global markets into a tailspin.
\nVietnam was Southeast Asia\u2019s biggest buyer of Chinese goods, with a bill of $161.9 billion, followed by Malaysia, which imported $101.5 billion worth in 2024.
\nXi will be in Vietnam on Monday and Tuesday, his first trip there since December 2023.
\nVietnam has long pursued a \u201cbamboo diplomacy\u201d approach, striving to stay on good terms with both China and the United States.
\nThe two countries have close economic ties, but Hanoi shares US concerns about Beijing\u2019s increasing assertiveness in the contested South China Sea.
\nChina claims almost all of the South China Sea as its own, but this is disputed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brunei.
\nThe Chinese leader in his Monday article insisted Beijing and Hanoi could resolve those disputes through dialogue.
\n\u201cWe should properly manage differences and safeguard peace and stability in our region,\u201d Xi wrote, according to Xinhua.
\n\u201cWith vision, we are fully capable of properly settling maritime issues through consultation and negotiation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING: Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned Monday that protectionism \u201cleads nowhere\u201d and that a trade war would have \u201cno winners,\u201d state media said, as he was due to kick off a tour of Southeast Asia with a visit to Vietnam. Xi\u2019s first overseas trip of the year will see him visit Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79614,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79596\/revisions\/79614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}