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  • US and China trade woes to deepen regardless of Biden or Trump

    US and China trade woes to deepen regardless of Biden or Trump

    Free trade policies facilitated “globalization,” the euphemism for the post-1970 surge in U.S. corporations’ investing abroad: producing and distributing there, re-locating operations there, and merging with foreign enterprises there. Presidents before Trump had insisted that free trade plus globalization best served U.S. interests.

    Both Democratic and Republican administrations had enthusiastically endorsed that insistence. Dutifully performing ideological support duties, they stressed how globalization’s benefits to U.S. corporations would “trickle down” to the rest of us. Globalizing U.S. corporations used portions of their profits to reward both parties with donations and other electoral and lobbying supports.

    Our last two Presidents reversed that position. Against free trade they favored multiple government interventions in international trade, especially imposing and raising tariffs. Instead of advocating free trade and globalization, they promoted economic nationalism. Like their predecessors, Trump and Biden depended on financial support from corporate America as well as votes from the employee class.

    Many U.S. corporations and those they enriched had shifted their profit expectations in response to the competition they faced from new, powerful non-U.S. firms. The latter had emerged during the free-trade/globalization conditions after 1970, above all in China. U.S. firms increasingly welcomed or demanded protection from those competitors. Accordingly, they financed changes in the political winds and shifts in “public opinion” toward economic nationalism.

    Trump and Biden thus endorsed pro-tariff policies that protected many corporations’ profits. Those policies also appealed to those for whom economic nationalism offered ideological comforts. For example, many in the United States grasped the relative decline of the United States and its G7 allies in the global economy and the relative rise of China and its BRICS allies.

    They welcomed an aggressive counteraction in the forms of tariff and trade wars. Both corporations (including mass media) and their subservient politicians worked to build popular and voter support. That was needed to pass the tax, budget, subsidy, tariff, and other laws that would realize the shift to economic nationalism. A key argument held that “tariffs protect jobs.”

    A political struggle pitted the defenders of “free trade” against those demanding “protection.” Over the last decade, those defenders have been losing.

    These days, most candidates and parties perform this particular ideological task for capitalism: persuading Americans that tariffs protect jobs. Note, however, that over the 50 years before around 2015, the same parties and their candidates mostly performed the opposite ideological task. Then they denounced tariffs as unnecessary, inefficient, and counterproductive government interferences.

    “Free international markets” would, they insisted, be much better for workers and capitalists. However, we need not and should not have been fooled then or now. Neither ideological claim is true.

    Free trade profits some industries, but not others. Those that profit rely on exporting their outputs to foreign markets, invest there, or rely on importing products from there. Similarly, tariffs profit some industries (those they protect), but not others. As industries evolve and change, so do their relationships with international trade. Correspondingly, their attitudes toward free trade versus tariffs change.

    Capitalist economies almost always pit pro-free trade against pro-tariff protection industries. Their battles vary from open, public, and intense to quiet and under-the-table. Their weapons include bribes, donations, and other kinds of deals offered to politicians mostly by the employers in the interested industries.

    Both sides also compete to enlist the public and especially voter support-“public opinion”-in order to swing politicians their way. Employers on each side spend millions to persuade the employee class to support their side. Politicians usually split according to which side offers more donations threatens more opposition in the next election, or has spent more to shape public opinion.

    Each side seeks to prevail, to make government policies favor free versus tariff-protected trade. One way to achieve that is endless repetition by politicians, business leaders, journalists, and academics of one side’s perspective in the hope and expectation that it becomes “common sense.”

    Each side’s arguments are driven by their respective industries’ financial self-interest, not any shared commitment to the “truth” about tariffs versus free trade. As we show below, the truth is precisely that neither tariffs nor their opposite, free trade, necessarily protect jobs.

    At best, both protect some jobs at the cost of losing others. The truth is that we cannot know-and thus cannot measure-all the effects on profits or jobs caused by either free trade or protectionism. So politicians cannot know what the net effect on jobs will be of either free or protected trade policies of governments.

    A simple example can clarify the basic points. Chinese auto-makers currently sell high-quality electric vehicles (EVs), cars, and trucks, globally, at very competitive prices. Those EVs can be found on roadways around the world, but not in the United States. That is because, until recently, a 27.5 percent tariff was applied in the United States.

    For example, if a Chinese EV’s port-of-entry price was, say, $30,000, it would cost a U.S. buyer $30,000 plus the 27.5 percent tariff (an additional $8,250) for a total U.S. price of $38,250. Recently, President Biden raised that tariff from 27.5 percent to 100 percent, thereby raising the Chinese EV’s price for potential U.S. buyers to $60,000.

    The EU plans similarly to raise its tariff against Chinese EVs from 10 percent to 48 percent, thereby raising the price to potential EU buyers to $44,400.Those tariffs protect makers of electric vehicles inside the U.S. and EU precisely because those EV makers need not add any tariff to the prices they charge.

    Thus, for example, if EVs made in the U.S. and EU had cost $40,000, they would have been uncompetitive with the Chinese EVs priced at $30,000. Prospects of profit for them would have been grim. With the tariffs now imposed by the U.S. and proposed by the EU, their EV makers see profit bonanzas.

    Makers in the EU can raise their EV price from $40,000 to, say, $43,000, and still be cheaper than Chinese EV imports suffering the planned EU tariff and thus priced at $44,400. EV makers in the U.S. can raise their prices to, say, $50,000, sharply improving their profits while still outcompeting Chinese EVs priced at $60,000 (including the 100 percent tariff).

    Barring interference from other factors (possible automation, changing tastes for cars, and so forth), we may assume that the raised tariffs increased the profits of EV makers inside the U.S. and EU. We may also assume that those tariffs also saved jobs at those U.S. EV makers. But that is never the end of the story. EV jobs are not the only jobs affected by raised tariffs on EVs.

    For example, many corporations in the United States buy fleets of EVs as inputs. Many compete with corporations outside the United States who likewise buy such fleets as their inputs. The raised U.S. tariff seriously disadvantages EV fleet-buying firms inside the United States.

    Firms inside the United States cannot buy Chinese electric vehicles for $30,000 each. They have to pay much more for the tariff-protected U.S.-made EVs. In stark contrast, their competitors outside the United States can buy Chinese EVs at the far cheaper $30,000 price. It follows that those outside competitors can offer lower prices for whatever products they sell because they enjoy lower (because free of tariffs) input costs. Those firms will gain buyers for their products around the world at the expense of their inside-the-U.S. competitors.

    Jobs will likely be lost in such competitively disadvantaged firms inside the United States. While raising tariffs on Chinese EVs may have protected U.S. workers at EV producers inside the United States, it also deprived other U.S. workers of jobs in other U.S. industries competitively disadvantaged by the EV tariff.

    In our examples above, U.S. and EU makers of EVs can and likely will raise their prices because of tariff protection. In this way, tariffs tend to worsen inflations. Inflations in turn tend to hurt exports as rising prices lead customers to buy elsewhere. Reduced exports usually mean reduced jobs making such exports.

    Still more factors shape tariffs’ job effects. Often “forgotten” by tariff boosters are possible retaliations by affected other countries. Evidence already suggests retaliatory Chinese tariffs coming on imports of U.S.-made large-engine vehicles. If that happens, U.S. exports of such engines to China will shrink or end. Jobs entailed in those exports will also end, offsetting job gains from the U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese EVs.

    China shifting trade to EU

    Since China is the chief target of U.S. and EU tariff policies it is important to see how China can retaliate in ways that threaten large U.S. and EU job losses. China has now successfully surrounded itself with allies in the BRICS (a total of 11 countries).

    The economic damage inflicted upon China by U.S. tariffs incentivizes China to offset much or all of that damage by shifting to sell output instead to the world outside of the United States and the EU and especially to its BRICS partners. As China redirects its exports, that will also impact where its imports will be sourced. All those changes will affect many U.S. and EU industries and the jobs they sustain.

    Honest economists shrug and plead irreducible uncertainty when asked whether tariffs will “protect” jobs. No matter how hard-pressed or bribed to give a definitive answer, honesty precludes it. Nonetheless, politicians eager to get votes by promising that a tariff they impose will protect jobs can rest easy. They will easily find economists who will give or sell them the answers they want to hear. Trump and Biden did and do.

    The implications of this analysis for the U.S. working class are significant. The struggle between free traders and protectionists pits shifting alliances of capitalist employers against one another. One alliance of capitalist employers fights another to win the working class’s votes. Each side promotes its false narrative about what is the best policy for jobs.

    The working class should not be fooled or distracted by these free trade versus protectionism struggles among capitalists. Whoever wins them remains profit-driven first and foremost. The ultimate impact on jobs is not a priority for any of them. It never was.

    The working class’s interest in shaping the quantity and quality of jobs can only be genuinely prioritized if society progresses beyond capitalism. That happens when employees (running democratic worker coops) replace employers (dominating hierarchical capitalist enterprises) in the driver seats of factories, offices, and stores.

    When employees have become their own employers, they will make the quantities and qualities of a society’s jobs a key policy objective rather than a side-effect of policies focused elsewhere.

    Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York. Wolff’s weekly show, “Economic Update,” is syndicated by more than 100 radio stations and goes to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV. His three recent books with Democracy at Work are The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself, Understanding Socialism, and Understanding Marxism, the latter of which is now available in a newly released 2021 hardcover edition with a new introduction by the author. Wolff’s new book, Understanding Capitalism, will be published and released this summer (2024) by Democracy at Work.

    Source: Independent Media Institute

    This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

  • Africa urbanisation: what can be learned from China about growing cities

    Africa urbanisation: what can be learned from China about growing cities

    Astrid R.N. Haas, University of Toronto

    The economic growth paths of Asian and African countries have often been compared. China, with gross domestic product per capita of US$251 in 1987, was poorer than most African countries at the time. Uganda’s GDP per capita was US$392, Zambia’s US$319 and Ghana’s US$354. Yet today China has GDP per capita of US$6,091 and it is the world’s second largest economy. In Uganda, it is still only US$964.

    Asia and Africa have urbanised at similar speeds. Africa is undergoing the fastest urban transition the world has experienced to date with projections that nearly 1 billion more people will live in Africa’s cities by 2050. Earlier, China was in the top spot: between 1978 and 2010, over 700 million people moved to China’s cities. The urbanisation rates in south-east Asia have been impressive as well and many of these nations have not even completed their urban transition yet.

    There’s a difference too. Across China and south-east Asia, urbanisation has been coupled with industrialisation and, through increases in economic productivity, has been unlocking growth dividends and reducing poverty. The same pattern has not happened in Africa.

    Much has been written to analyse how the urban transition happened, particularly in China, and what other parts of the world can copy from it. The “best practices” identified include policies around special economic zones, which have now proliferated across Africa.

    Success in replication has been limited, at best. It’s not always remembered that China’s success did not happen overnight. It was not a linear process and not all regions benefited equally.

    But something did happen in China and many benefited. As Chinese scholar Yuen Yuen Ang highlighted in her book How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, China’s economic reforms over this period were bold, broad and uneven. What lessons and ideas does that offer for Africa?

    Africa: urbanisation without industrialisation

    No country has reached middle-income status without undergoing a well-managed process of urban transition. However, although the urban transition in many African countries is even quicker than China’s, it has largely been decoupled from industrialisation. What the African experience is showing is that when urbanisation is not linked to investments in public infrastructure and services, it will amplify the downsides of dense living, such as the proliferation of informal settlements, congestion and contagion, as seen most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Publications about and comparisons of Chinese and African urbanisation have mostly come from the global north. Less comparative work has been done by African urban scholars.

    This presents a learning opportunity, through better understanding some of the details of what actually happened. Therefore, as an African urban scholar myself, I did some initial research on this a few years ago, together with co-authors. We published our findings in the working paper Can Africa learn from the Chinese urbanisation story?.

    Our conclusion was “yes” – but with caveats.

    The first caveat is obvious but needs to be restated. China is a large country. Africa, by contrast, is a diverse continent with 54 countries and even more diversity in its cities.

    And learning should not mean directly adopting what China did, which was very context specific. Rather, Africa’s scholars and policymakers now have the benefits of hindsight and should use this to carefully assess what worked and what did not, and why.

    Perhaps most importantly, comparative learning can and should go both ways.

    Deep dive into China’s urbanisation

    I now have an ideal opportunity to build on this research and to learn directly from the Asian region itself, thanks to Hong Kong’s top-talent visa scheme, which allows me to live and work from the region for two years.

    Nearly a year into my stay here, and through my expanding networks into the government, academic and private sector circles in Hong Kong, China and beyond, my own understanding of the urbanisation processes here is growing.

    It’s an important time to engage especially with China. Through its Belt-and-Road Initiative, China is directly shaping many African cities through investments and policies. It’s visible in expressways, railways, and special economic zones.

    There has been some growing concern with the amount and type of Chinese debt that some countries are taking on and under what conditions. So it’s necessary to understand what may be shaping policies and investment decisions from the Chinese perspective.

    Over the coming year, I will be reflecting on what I’m learning in a series of articles for The Conversation Africa. These will touch on some of what I conclude are the most important factors from the African urban perspective, based on my research and work on African urbanisation over the past decade. I will also draw on leanings from academics who have studied and written both about urbanisation in China and the south-east Asian region more broadly.

    Topics will include financing of public infrastructure, urban planning, special economic zones and smart cities, among others. These reflections will also form the basis of a more formal publication that I plan to write.

    I reject the notion of establishing “best practices” and finding “a model” that can be directly replicated. As noted, China’s urban transition, although it happened quickly, did not happen overnight and was, like everywhere else in the world, rooted in deep historical, institutional, economic and cultural contexts.

    It is exactly these idiosyncrasies that I want to understand and unpack: the messiness of the policy process, how policies were suited to local context, what challenges China faced and some of the opportunities and challenges we can glean from hindsight following over 40 years of implementation. These will direct “deposits” for what Yuen Yuen Ang, in an essay, calls the Non-Best Practice Bank of Knowledge, with the emphasis on the fact that “solutions can come in multiple forms, even in ways that contradict western best practices”.

    This is the first in a series of articles that will look at Africa’s urbanisation and draw lessons from other countries.The Conversation

    Astrid R.N. Haas, Adjunct professor, University of Toronto

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

  • Israel hits four Gaza schools in four days

    Israel hits four Gaza schools in four days

    In the past four days, Israel has struck four schools in Gaza where hundreds of civilians sought refuge, resulting in the deaths of over 50 Palestinians, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees has said.

    The latest deadly strike hit a school turned shelter in southern Gaza on July 9 as Israeli forces in the war-ravaged territory’s main city pushed on with a major offensive that has again displaced Palestinians.

    A hospital source in Khan Younis in southern Gaza said at least 29 people were killed when the school was hit in nearby Abasan.

    The Israeli military said its air force had carried out a strike in the area targeting a “terrorist” and would review the incident.

    Three previous Israeli strikes since July 6 on schools across Gaza used by displaced Palestinians have killed a total of at least 20 people, according to officials and rescuers.

    Condemning the attack, UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said on July 10 that Israel has targeted two-thirds of UNRWA schools since the war began last October.

    Lazzarini emphasized that schools in Gaza have ceased to be sanctuaries of education and beacons of hope for children, instead transforming into “overcrowded shelters.” He remarked that Gaza is unequivocally unsuitable for children.

    The blatant disregard for international humanitarian law cannot become the new norm,” he asserted, reiterating his call for a ceasefire.

    Türkiye also condemned the Israeli attack on the school, saying that the mass graves discovered in largely destroyed Khan Younis and the targeting of four schools in as many days are “concrete evidence” that Israel seeks to destroy the Palestinian people.

    Germany said Wednesday that a deadly Israeli strike on a school in southern Gaza being used as a shelter was “unacceptable” and called for a rapid investigation into the incident.

    The Israeli army, meanwhile, dropped thousands of leaflets on Gaza City urging all residents to leave amid an intensified military offensive on the Palestinian territory’s main city.

    The leaflets, addressed to “everyone in Gaza City,” set out routes out of the city to designated safe areas further south and warned the urban area would “remain a dangerous combat zone” as the army hits Hamas targets.

    Israel issued a first formal evacuation order for part of the city on June 27, and two more in the following days.

  • China’s BYD to invest $1bn in Turkey for EV plant

    China’s BYD to invest $1bn in Turkey for EV plant

    Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD will invest $1 billion in Turkey to set up an EV and plug-in hybrid vehicle factory with an annual capacity of 150,000 units, creating a second European production and export hub after the one it is building in Hungary.

    BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu and Turkish Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacir signed an investment deal here on Monday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended before leaving for the NATO summit, which begins in Washington on Tuesday.

    The location of the factory was not announced in a statement released after the signing ceremony. Bloomberg reported Friday that it would be built in Manisa province, which is about 40 kilometers from Izmir, a major port on the Aegean coast. BYD will also establish a research and development center in Turkey.

    The deal comes on the heels of the opening last week of a BYD plant in Thailand, its first in Southeast Asia.

    This will be the first EV factory owned by a foreign manufacturer in Turkey. The facility is slated to begin production before the end of 2026 and is expected to employ 5,000 people.

    Thanks to Turkey’s “unique advantages such as its developing technology ecosystem, strong supplier base, extraordinary location, and skilled workforce, BYD’s investment in this new production facility will further develop the brand’s local production capabilities and increase logistical efficiency,” the automaker said in a statement.

    “We aim to reach consumers in Europe by meeting the growing demand for new energy vehicles in the region,” BYD said,

    Kacir said that Turkey is the third-largest car manufacturer in Europe and that “we see the transformation towards new-generation and environmentally friendly electric vehicles as a primary goal in the automotive sector, which is the leading sector in exports, with an annual volume exceeding $35 billion.”

    The country produced more than 1.4 million autos in 2023, of which about 70% were passenger cars. Turkey, a bridge between Asia and Europe, has a customs union agreement with the European Union as well as free trade agreements with more than 20 countries, including neighboring Egypt and Georgia as well as South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. It has been negotiating with Japan for years to conclude an economic partnership agreement.

    Turkey hosts many global brands, such as Toyota, Ford, Renault and Hyundai, as a production and export base.

    From left, Turkish Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacir, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu at the signing ceremony in Istanbul on July 8. (Ministry of Industry and Technology)

    Roughly 65,000 EVs were sold in Turkey last year, accounting for around 7% of total passenger car sales in the country.

    About five years earlier, Turkish EV brand Togg was established by four industry giants and the country’s largest nongovernmental organization. Togg controlled almost 30% of Turkey’s EV market in 2023, followed by Tesla at 18.5%. Elon Musk’s company entered Turkey that April. BYD entered that October and sold less than a thousand units of its Atto 3 to finish the year with a little more than 1% of the market.

    Also in 2023, a joint venture of Togg and China’s Farasis Energy began producing battery modules and packs. It plans to start making battery cells in 2026, aiming to reach a 20-gigawatt-hour capacity.

    Turkey has been trying to protect Togg from foreign competition in general and from Chinese brands in particular.

    In March 2023, Turkey moved to impose a 40% import tariff on EVs made in China on top of an existing 10% levy. It later took additional measures, such as mandating that EV manufacturers from countries with which Turkey has no free trade agreement establish at least 20 maintenance and repair service centers across the country that should be owned by themselves or their distributors. This affected Chinese and Japanese brands.

    This defense of Togg caused Chinese EV sales to drop and brands to push exports of internal-combustion and hybrid models in Turkey.

    The Turkish government responded this June by expanding the 40% additional import tariff to all automobiles imported from China. The Ministry of Trade explained that the measure was meant “to increase the share of local production which has been in decline within the domestic market.” It also said the expansion was due to “developments related to foreign trade balance and our country’s current account deficit targets.”

    Finally, the ministry said, the scope of the 40% tariff was widened “to encourage investment and production inside Turkey.”

    Turkey’s hardball seems to have worked. The day after Erdogan met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Turkey softened the measure this past Friday by waiving the additional 40% tariff for brands that invest in Turkish production.

    “The Turkish government’s move to impose an additional 40% levy convinced BYD to invest in Turkey by exempting the company from the charge,” said Erol Sahin, general manager of automotive consultancy EBS. “Other Chinese EV brands such as Chery, Geely may follow BYD to produce in Turkey,” Sahin told Nikkei Asia.

    BYD may be using Turkey and its EU customs union agreement as an escape valve of sorts. The EU last week imposed a provisional 17.4% tariff on BYD EVs built in China on top of the existing 10% levy on standard cars. The EU’s provisional tariff comes with the U.S. already having moved to quadruple duties on China-made EVs to over 100%.

    BYD is already building a factory in Hungary, which joined the EU in 2004 and is preparing to adopt the euro. A Turkish factory will bolster these plans.

    The company is also constructing a new factory in Brazil and is in talks to establish one in Mexico.

    The last foreign auto brand to establish a factory in Turkey was Honda back in 1997. That plant was shut down in 2021 after the Japanese brand decided to withdraw from European auto production altogether.

    In 2019, Turkey came close to clinching its first new foreign brand production investment in more than two decades. At the time, Volkswagen was close to announcing that it would break ground in Manisa. But that deal was scuttled, first by Turkey’s military operation in Syria and later by pandemic-related developments. The German carmaker scrapped the plan in 2020.

  • President Xi Jinping urges swift Ukraine resolution

    President Xi Jinping urges swift Ukraine resolution

    President Xi Jinping said on Monday that a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis and an early ceasefire are in the best interest of all parties, and urged the international community to create conditions for direct dialogue and negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

    Xi made the remarks during a meeting in Beijing with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who arrived in the Chinese capital on Monday morning. “Peace mission 3.0” is how Orban captioned a picture posted on social media platform X soon after his arrival in Beijing.

    Orban’s visit to the Chinese capital comes on the heels of his trips last week to Moscow and Kyiv, where he proposed that Ukraine consider agreeing to an immediate cease-fire with Russia.

    During the meeting in Beijing, the two leaders engaged in in-depth discussions on the Ukraine crisis. Orban briefed Xi about his recent visits to Russia and Ukraine. Xi commended him for his efforts to promote a political resolution of the Ukraine crisis and outlined China’s views and propositions on the matter.

    Xi said that priority should be given to adhering to the “three principles of no spillover from the battlefield, no escalation of fighting and no adding fuel to the fire by relevant parties”, in order to quickly cool down the situation.

    He underlined the need for the international community to provide assistance for direct dialogue and negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Only when all major powers exert “positive rather than negative influence” can a ceasefire occur, he said.

    Xi said that China has been actively facilitating peace talks in its own way, encouraging and supporting all efforts conducive to a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Noting that the basic principles and efforts of China and Hungary are aligned, he said that China is willing to continue its communication with Hungary and relevant parties.

    On Wednesday, Xi reiterated China’s position on the Ukraine crisis during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Astana, Kazakhstan. He said that China is willing to continue making positive efforts to promote a political settlement of the crisis.

    Following his meeting with Xi, Orban posted on X that China is a “key power” in creating the conditions for peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “This is why I came to meet with President Xi in Beijing, just two months after his official visit to Budapest,” Orban wrote.

    Hungary assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union at the start of July.

    During his meeting with Orban on Monday, Xi expressed the hope that Hungary would play an active role in promoting the healthy and stable development of China-EU relations and in achieving positive interactions between them.

    Xi also emphasized that there is no geopolitical wrangling or conflict of fundamental interests between China and the EU.

    China-EU relations are of strategic significance and global influence and should be kept stable and healthy, he said, adding that both sides should work together to address global challenges.

    He emphasized the need for both sides to uphold partnership, continue to promote two-way opening-up and strengthen international cooperation, in order to contribute to promoting global peace, stability, development and prosperity.

    On bilateral relations, Xi said that China will further comprehensively deepen reform, promote high-quality development and advance high-level opening-up, which will provide new opportunities for and inject new impetus into China-Hungary cooperation.

    He called for maintaining high-level exchanges between the two countries, deepening political mutual trust, and enhancing strategic communication and coordination.

    Both countries should continue to firmly support each other, strengthen practical cooperation in various fields, and actively participate in the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said.

    Recalling Xi’s state visit to Hungary in May, Orban said his country advocates strengthening cooperation with China, and opposes forming “small circles” and stoking bloc confrontation.

    Hungary is willing to take the opportunity of its rotating presidency of the EU to actively promote the sound development of EU-China relations, he said.

    Orban noted that China wants world peace and has put forward a series of important, constructive initiatives amid a turbulent international situation.

    China has used practical actions to demonstrate its ability as an important stabilizer in promoting world peace, Orban said. Hungary highly appreciates and values China’s role and influence in global affairs, and is willing to closely maintain strategic communication and cooperation with China, he added.