Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE
"On the trade friction started by the US: if the US wants to talk, we will keep the door open. If they want to fight, we are ready," General Wei Fenghe told an international security dialogue in Singapore.
Beijing and Washington have been locked in a bruising tit-for-tat trade war, exchanging tariffs on $360 billion in two-way trade so far.
Wei is the first Chinese defence minister to attend the forum known as the Shangri-La Dialogue since 2011.
Separately, the Chinese government said Washington's escalating trade war with Beijing has not "made America great again" and has instead damaged the American economy, stressing that while it wants resolution through talks it will not compromise on core principles.
The comments came in a white paper released by the Chinese government a day after it hit $60 billion worth of US goods with new punitive tariffs ranging from five to 25 percent, in retaliation for Washington raising duty on $200 billion in Chinese goods to 25 percent.
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"The (US) tariff measures have not boosted American economic growth. Instead, they have done serious harm to the US economy," the paper said, pointing to what it described as increased production costs and consumer prices in the United States and threats to economic growth.
Washington and Beijing resumed their bruising trade battle last month when the latest round of talks ended without a deal, with American negotiators accusing their Chinese counterparts of reneging on previous commitments.
But China said the US should bear "sole and entire responsibility" for the breakdown, accusing Washington of repeatedly changing its demands and of making "reckless" allegations about Beijing's conduct during the negotiations.
The world's top two economies have so far exchanged tit-for-tat tariffs on two-way trade worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and the spat has spooked markets and sparked worries about global economic growth.
The trade conflict has been upstaged in recent weeks by Washington's blacklisting of Chinese tech titan Huawei over national security concerns, and in an apparent response to that move, Beijing said Friday it would release its own list of "unreliable entities".
Washington and Beijing have also been vying for influence in the Asia-Pacific region, which hosts potential flashpoints such as the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait.
Washington has been pushing back against Beijing's aggressive militarisation of the South China Sea, where China has staked "indisputable" ownership over almost the whole area and rejects partial claims by Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Beijing is also regularly angered by US and other warships transiting through the Taiwan Strait, which it considers part of its territorial waters.
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