China Tries to Woo U.S. Trade Team With Shanghai Jazz-Age Glamor
U.S. delegates including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are set to attend a landmark Jazz hotel in Shanghai.
(Bloomberg) --
Chinese trade negotiators are set to host their U.S. counterparts at a landmark of jazz-era Shanghai on the city’s riverside Bund, re-opening trade talks with a marked change of atmosphere after an almost three-month hiatus.
U.S. delegates including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are set to attend a dinner at the Fairmont Peace Hotel on Tuesday evening, according to people familiar with the matter. The U.S. delegation arrived at a separate hotel on the Bund waterfront shortly after 1:30 p.m. local time.
The 1920s art-deco structure is among the most celebrated buildings on the Shanghai riverside, and has seen guests including Charlie Chaplin and Noel Coward when it was known as the Cathay Hotel. It played a brief role as municipal offices after the founding of the People’s Republic.
Expectations for a breakthrough in the trade talks remain low. The two sides are further apart than they were three months ago, when negotiations broke down and each side blamed the other for derailing attempts to reach a deal. China is pushing for compromise in the talks, with state media underlining this week that the U.S. should meet it “halfway.”
- For more insight from Bloomberg Economics, click here
Further Apart
Since the initial tariffs in June last year, both Washington and Beijing have further raised and expanded the duties. The conflict between the world’s two largest economies has also spread, dragging in companies such as Huawei Technologies Co. and FedEx Corp., farmers in the Midwest, factory workers across Asia, and the World Trade Organization.
The official trade talks will take place at the Xijiao State Guest Hotel on Wednesday, the people said. The “guest house” is a leafy compound of luxury reception buildings and accommodation in the west of the city.
A spokesman for the USTR couldn’t immediately confirm the plans. The Commerce Ministry didn’t immediately respond to request for comment on the arrangements. A spokesperson for the Fairmont Peace Hotel declined to comment on the arrangements.
Complicated History
Shanghai is mainland China’s financial capital and its busiest port. The Peace Hotel’s setting in the former International Settlement, which the U.S. helped manage during a period of foreign interference that the Communist Party has vowed never to repeat, is also freighted with the complicated history of America’s relationship with China.
On the east passage from the lobby, the walls show off the hotel’s glamorous past. There’s Chaplin posing on the famous staircase in 1936, and scenes from the Chinese movie blockbuster Shanghai Triad, set in the 1930s. U.S. President Bill Clinton appears with Hillary Clinton on the roof in 1998, posing with Shanghai’s then-mayor.
The hotel plays up its origins in Shanghai’s pre-WWII jazz age. The only clear nod to China’s present-day politics are at least two standing signs declaring “Socialism’s Core Values” -- a fifteen-strong list including patriotism, honesty and harmony. Only the heading is rendered in English, though, as “China’s Core Values.”
After the U.S. delegates arrived, President Donald Trump lashed out at China from Washington for what he said is its unwillingness to buy American agricultural products and said it continues to “rip off” the U.S.
“China is doing very badly, worst year in 27 - was supposed to start buying our agricultural product now - no signs that they are doing so,” Trump said Tuesday on Twitter. “That is the problem with China, they just don’t come through.”
Chinese officials, meanwhile, again alleged American involvement in Hong Kong’s historic unrest, saying recent violence at protests was “a creation of the U.S.”
“Those who play with fire will inevitably burn themselves,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing on Monday. “China urges the U.S. to stop as soon as possible.”
On Tuesday, an editorial in the state-owned China Daily argued that the city was an “auspicious” venue to re-start the talks, and referenced the visit by former U.S. President Richard Nixon there in 1972 in the course of the diplomatic thaw between the communist and capitalist states.
Tariffs to Hit China Unemployment, Growth in Second Half: Citic
Among other things, the document established a working compromise on the issue of Taiwan, with the U.S. saying it “does not challenge” the belief that both sides are part of “one China.”
Taoran Notes, a blog run by the state-owned Economic Daily newspaper, has even suggested that the city could be the location for future rounds of negotiations.
“It may be just a coincidence that this round of talks is being held in Shanghai, where 47 years ago, the two sides signed the Shanghai Communique that laid the foundation for the normalization of bilateral relations,” according to the editorial. “The differences that existed then between the two countries after decades of estrangement were definitely much greater than they are today.”
--With assistance from James Mayger, Philip Glamann, Karen Leigh and Dandan Li.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Haze Fan in Beijing at hfan40@bloomberg.net;Charlie Zhu in Shanghai at qzhu46@bloomberg.net;Miao Han in Beijing at mhan22@bloomberg.net;Martin Ritchie in Shanghai at mritchie14@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, Brendan Scott
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
With assistance from Bloomberg