US-China Trade War: Beijing To Open Financial Sector Wider

The People's Republic of China (PRC, China) will continue to implement its part of the Phase One Trade Deal with the United States by fulfilling financial opening-up pledges.

According to the head of the People's Bank of China, Yi Gang, "No matter how the international situation changes, the most important thing is to get our own things done and firmly deepen financial reform and opening up." The deal that was signed at the White House at the beginning of the year served as a peace agreement in a long-lasting, bitter trade war between D.C. and Beijing. It is regarded as one of the most stable elements within the relationship between the two powers as their geopolitical and technological rivalry intensified.

The Chinese government's intention to continually honor the trade deal requires them to significantly enhance intellectual property rights protection, and increase purchases of US goods and services, further demonstrating their efforts to keep US-China ties from sliding away. At the same time, the current COVID-19 pandemic poses a challenge as many of China's purchases are behind schedule. Despite this, Yi reaffirmed China's promises of financially opening-up by allowing trading houses from Wall Street to have exclusively owned fund management operations and brokerages in the PRC.

As of now, the scheduled tariff increase for Tranche 4B products are still suspended and existing tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese products, including some on textiles, are likely to stay in place until after the U.S. presidential election.

To be continued...