Beijing announces meeting between Xi and Trump

Beijing has confirmed that President Xi Jinping will meet with his United States counterpart Donald Trump next week in Florida, marking their first meeting since Trump took office earlier this year.

Xi will pay a state visit to Finland from April 4-6, and meet with Trump in Florida on April 6-7, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang announced on Thursday at a daily news conference in Beijing.

Xi and Trump have spoken to each other twice on the phone and exchanged three letters.

Their first meeting was announced amid intense media attention on trade relations between the world's two largest economies. China and the US are each other's largest trading partner.

On China-US trade issues, Lu said Beijing is ready to "expand pragmatic cooperation in economic and trade areas, properly tackle economic and trade frictions through dialogue and communication, and ensure the healthy, stable development of China-US economic and trade ties".

Lu referred to the fact that the bilateral commodity trade volume reached $519.6 billion last year, 207 times the figure for the year when the two countries forged diplomatic ties.

The economic and trade ties between China and the US are of a mutual benefit and win-win nature, the ties are "greatly complimentary", and their interests are highly integrated, Lu said.

On Xi's state visit Finland, Lu said the visit will be the first paid by Xi this year to a European Union country, and it will also be Xi's first visit to northern Europe as China's top leader.

This demonstrates the great importance attached by China to building a future-oriented new-type cooperative partnership with Finland, and shows China's support to the European Union as well, Lu said.

Finland was among the first Western countries to establish diplomatic ties with China, and was the first Western country to sign intergovernmental trade deals with China, Lu noted.

In recent years, the China-Finland relationship has demonstrated a good momentum of development, and both countries have kept close high-level exchanges, and their political mutual trust has been increasingly strengthened, Lu said.