Openness brings progress, closure leads to backwardness: Chinese FM on US-imposed tarrifs

KUALA LUMPUR - Openness brings progress, while closure leads to backwardness, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Saturday when commenting on US-imposed high tariffs against various countries.

Amid the ongoing mixture of changes and chaos in the current international situation, every country must make a choice between unilateralism and multilateralism, closeness and openness, unity and division, said Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, who was here attending the ASEAN Plus foreign ministers' meetings in the Malaysian capital.

China's choice is to be more open, he stressed, explaining that this is not only the basic experience of China's development and growth, but also the inevitable logic of history moving forward.

China has taken the initiative to provide zero-tariff treatment for products to the least developed countries and the entire Africa, fully completed negotiations on the Version 3.0 China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, and has created a new model of cross-regional cooperation at the ASEAN-China-GCC summit, he added.

In contrast, the high tariffs imposed on various countries are a clear violation of World Trade Organization rules, disrupting the stable operation of the production and supply chains, and hindering the recovery and development of the world economy, said the Chinese foreign minister, adding that such move is irresponsible, unpopular, and unsustainable.

Wang said that China will continue to stand firmly with countries in the region, promoting unity, cooperation, and collective strength, and will always be an advocate of multilateralism, a defender of free trade, and a contributor to open development, he said.