China's honoring of trade deal shows its trustworthiness

To implement phase one trade deal requires China and the United States to create conditions and remove obstructions, WeChat account Taoran Biji said in a commentary on Friday. Excerpts are below:

On Thursday, Vice-Premier Liu He said in his written statement to the 12th Lujiazui Forum that China and US should work together to implement the phase one trade deal reached five months ago.

On Wednesday, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also wrote in a statement to US Congress that China will honor its promise in the deal and that it had already purchased US agricultural products worth more than $10 billion.

Five months after China and the US signed the agreement these words from the two leading negotiators send quite positive signals.

What Lighthizer said is true. Despite the huge difficulties it faces as the first nation that fought the COVID-19 epidemic, China has been honoring its promise in the deal with the US. China has mobilized huge social resources and suffered much loss in the epidemic, but China believes a word is a word and will do what it has promised.

Anybody who knows about it will read the message that the Chinese promise counts and China is trustworthy.

Besides, the two sides need to strengthen cooperation to implement the phase one deal.

For the past several months, some US politicians, preoccupied with Cold War mentality, tried to blame China for the novel coronavirus epidemic even though they knew such blames were groundless. Such blames serve the narrow political interests of these US politicians but hurt US and China's interests.

Some of these politicians even tried to link the issues with trade, which is detrimental to the interests of both. It requires efforts and wisdom of both sides to remove these obstacles.

Whatever obstacles there are, China and the US have no choice but to work together. Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just met in Hawaii on Tuesday and Wednesday, and both sides said it was a constructive dialogue.

The Sino-US trade talks over the past two years and the anti-pandemic efforts over the past six months have shown stronger co-operation between the two countries is the only right way for them to resolve the trade dispute and to fight against the pandemic.

Hope more concrete measures will be taken to make the two countries work better together.