Protesters rush Beijing delegation as US-China trade war talks start with meeting between VP Liu He and USTR Robert Lighthizer
- Protesters, angry about Beijing’s relocation of citizens, confronted members of the Chinese delegation as they left their hotel on Wednesday morning
- Among the talks’ priorities are protection of US intellectual property, the forced transfer of US technology through joint ventures and enforcement mechanisms
China’s trade delegation was given a jolting start to its visit to Washington on Wednesday when it was confronted by Chinese protesters en route to the site of the first of two days of high-stakes negotiations.
The demonstrators, reported by Bloomberg to have been protesting Beijing’s forced relocation of Chinese citizens, rushed the delegation as it left Washington’s Willard Hotel. Video footage of the scuffle shows one woman being knocked down by security personnel.
The delegation, led by China’s Vice-Premier Liu He, soon arrived at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, where cabinet ministers will spend two days trying to narrow the gap in the countries’ positions in a trade war that is in its seventh month.
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Among the priorities are protection of US intellectual property, the forced transfer of US technology through joint ventures, and enforcement mechanisms to verify that China follows through on any promised changes.
The talks, led by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on the American side, come two-thirds of the way into a 90-day truce agreed upon by the countries’ presidents on December 1 on the sideline of the G20 summit in Argentina.
Mid-level discussions since then have done little to narrow the gap, and with time running out before the March 1 deadline – after which the US is expected to increase tariffs again – both sides will be eager to make significant progress this week before the Chinese government effectively shuts down for the Lunar New Year holiday next week.
Highlighting the high-stakes nature of this week’s discussions is a scheduled face-to-face meeting between US President Donald Trump and Liu on Thursday.
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Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said before the talks began that a short-term deal on China’s substantial purchase of US goods was likely, but played down the possibility of substantial progress China could make structural reforms.
“I do not believe that the real problems in the US-China relationship can be solved because the Chinese development model under Xi Jinping is directly contradictory to what the US wants,” he said.
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As the talks began, the tension between the parties was palpable, said body language expert Rebecca Klein, reviewing video footage showing Lighthizer breaking the silence with a joke about how one end of the table would get far more TV exposure than the other.
“Their body language is one of overcompensation with forced smiles and posturing,” said Klein of Baltimore-based TALLsmall Productions, referring to Lighthizer and another US negotiator, Peter Navarro. She added that they presented the body language of “nervous freshmen in an upper-level classroom.”
The dramatic start to the Chinese delegation’s visit continued at lunchtime, when a protester crossed police lines and tried to approach the team’s motorcade as it returned to the Willard. NBC reported that a police officer was injured by the protester, who was arrested.
In an apparent effort to avoid a repeat of the morning’s scuffle, the delegation was ushered into the back entrance of its hotel amid a swarm of uniformed American police officers and plain-clothes Chinese security personnel, none of whom responded to questions.
Asked about how the morning’s talks had gone, members of the delegation just smiled silently.
About 30 minutes before their arrival, a large delivery of Chinese food was brought to the hotel and collected by a man who declined to say whether it was for Liu’s team, responding in Chinese: “We have a lot of staff here.”
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Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, declined to comment on the talks’ progress as he walked into the USTR headquarters on Wednesday evening.
Said Kudlow, who was part of the US delegation: “Tomorrow afternoon we’ll know.”
Additional reporting by Wendy Wu in Washington
