Alwaght- China has accused the US of deliberately provoking commercial disputes that amount to "naked economic terrorism".
"We are against the trade war, but we are not afraid of it," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Hanhui said on Thursday at a press briefing to preview President Xi Jinping's trip to Russia next week.
"This premeditated instigation of a trade conflict is naked economic terrorism, economic chauvinism, and economic bullying," Zhang told reporters in Beijing, stressing that China opposed the systematic use of "big sticks" such as sanctions, tariffs, and protectionism.
"There is no winner in a trade war," he warned. "This trade conflict will also have a serious negative impact on the development and revival of the global economy."
The world's two largest economies are at loggerheads as trade talks have apparently stalled, with US President Donald Trump hiking tariffs on Chinese goods earlier this month and blacklisting telecommunications giant Huawei.
China has hit back with its own tariff increase that will take effect on June 1, while state media has suggested that Beijing could stop exports of rare earth minerals to the US, depriving Washington of a key resource used to make hi-tech products.
"We advise the US to not underestimate China's ability to safeguard its own development rights and interests, and not to say we didn't warn you," Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily, said in an editorial on Wednesday, warning that rare earth minerals could be used as a countermeasure.
China produces more than 95 percent of the world's rare earth minerals and the US relies on the Asian superpower for more than 80 percent of its imports.
