China has unexpectedly appointed a new trade envoy, as officials said the US’s practice of “tariff barriers and trade bullying” is having a serious impact on the global economic order.
The government said today that Li Chenggang is replacing Wang Shouwen, who took part in negotiations for the 2020 trade deal between the China and the US.
Li, 58, is a former assistant commerce minister who was in the role during Trump’s first administration.
Wang, 59, who assumed the No 2 role at the commerce ministry in 2022, was regarded as a tough negotiator and clashed with US officials in past meetings, Reuters reported, citing a source in Beijing’s foreign business community, who described him as “a bulldog, very intense”.
Speaking to Reuters, one expert said the change in jobs was “very abrupt and potentially disruptive” given the current trade tensions – adding that Wang also had experience negotiating with US since the first Trump administration.
“It might be that in the view of China’s top leadership, given how tensions have continued escalating, they need someone else to break the impasse… and finally start negotiating,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior adviser to the Conference Board’s China Centre.
However, another analyst who spoke to Reuters suggested the move could just be a “routine promotion” that just happened to come at a particularly tense period in time.