Prepare for difficult times, China's Xi urges as trade war simmers

Today on the new Long March we must overcome various major risks and challenges, says Chinese President

BEIJING, WASHINGTON: China must prepare for difficult times as the international situation is increasingly complex, President Xi Jinping said in comments carried by state media on Wednesday, as the US-China trade war took a mounting toll on tech giant Huawei.

The world's two largest economies have escalated tariff increases on each other's imports after talks broke down to resolve their dispute, and the acrimony has intensified since Washington last week blacklisted Chinese telecom equipment company Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.

The listing, which curbs Huawei's access to US-made components, is a potentially devastating blow for the company that has rattled technology supply chains and investors, and saw several mobile carriers on Wednesday delay the launch of new Huawei smartphone handsets.

During a three-day trip this week to the southern province of Jiangxi, a cradle of China's Communist revolution, Xi urged people to learn the lessons of the hardships of the past. "Today, on the new Long March, we must overcome various major risks and challenges from home and abroad," state news agency Xinhua paraphrased Xi as saying, referring to the 1934-36 trek of Communist Party members fleeing a civil war to a remote rural base, from where they re-grouped and eventually took power in 1949.

"Our country is still in a period of important strategic opportunities for development, but the international situation is increasingly complicated," he said. "We must be conscious of the long-term and complex nature of various unfavorable factors at home and abroad, and appropriately prepare for various difficult situations."

The report did not elaborate on those difficulties, and did not directly mention the trade war or of the United States.