President Xi Jinping has encouraged the United States company
Starbucks to play a positive role in promoting China-US economic and
trade cooperation and bilateral ties. Xi made the remark in a reply letter to Howard Schultz, Starbucks
Corp chairman emeritus. The letter, dated Jan 6, was made public on
Thursday. Xi said in his reply letter that under the leadership of the
Communist Party of China, the 1.4 billion Chinese people have made
long-term and arduous efforts to build a moderately prosperous society
in all respects and pursue socialist modernization. The new journey embarked upon by China of fully building a modern
socialist country will provide broader space for enterprises from across
the world, including Starbucks and other US companies, to develop in
China, Xi said. The president expressed hope that the world's largest coffeehouse
chain and Schultz himself will make efforts to promote China-US economic
and trade cooperation as well as bilateral relations. In his letter to Xi earlier, Schultz congratulated China on the
upcoming completion of building a moderately prosperous society in all
respects under Xi's leadership, and expressed his respect for the
Chinese people and Chinese culture. The exchange of letters between Xi and Schultz came as China-US
relations have encountered unprecedented difficulties in recent years. China has attributed the deterioration of bilateral ties to the
serious misconceptions of US policymakers about China. Some US
politicians tried to decouple with China and tried every means to
suppress Chinese companies like Huawei and harm normal people-to-people
exchanges as well as economic and trade cooperation between Chinese and
US companies. Beijing has insisted that it wants to develop a relationship with the
US based on coordination, cooperation and stability in the spirit of
non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. Speaking to Chinese media earlier this month, State Councilor and
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China-US relations have come to a new
crossroads and a new window of hope is opening. "We hope that the next
US administration will return to a sensible approach, resume dialogue
with China, restore normalcy to the bilateral relations and restart
cooperation." Despite the worsening of their ties, trade between China and the US
rose last year, amounting to more than $586 billion, up 8.3 percent
year-on-year, according to the General Administration of Customs.
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