China will not 'play defence' in US trade war, says Global Times

China will respond to "unilateral" US tariffs with firm countermeasures in the escalating trade war between the two countries, according to a report from widely read Chinese newspaper Global Times.

The report said Beijing "will no longer play defence" as the Wall Street Journal reports that China may pull out of trade talks with the US later this month, while President Donald Trump is expected to confirm new tariffs worth $200bn on Chinese goods as early as Monday.

The possibility of trade talks looked to be a positive step in what has been an increasingly bitter spat between the world’s two largest economies, but one senior Chinese advisory official was quoted by the report as saying China would not negotiate "with a gun pointed to its head."

"We are looking forward to a more beautiful counter-attack and will keep increasing the pain felt by the US," said a Chinese-language column in the Global Times.

The two nations have already placed a 25% levy on $50bn-worth of each other's goods in a row that stretches back to at least the beginning of the year.

China’s former finance minister and chairman of the national council for social security fund Lou Jiwei told a Beijing forum on Sunday that in order to grasp the initiative, China could look to restrict the export of certain goods and commodities to US manufacturers.

The dispute stems from Trump’s demand that China cut its $375bn trade surplus with the US, while ending policies aimed at acquiring US technologies and intellectual property and rolling back high-tech industrial subsidies.