“What they were negotiating in Beijing and Washington in the past round [of talks earlier this year] was mostly about trade itself,” Fan Gang, a former member of the monetary policy committee of the People’s Bank of China, said in a speech at Harvard University on Wednesday.
Since the countries had not even begun to discuss the two issues at the heart of the trade war, it was “hard to have a solution” to the dispute, Fan said.
When asked whether China would improve its intellectual property protection and further open up its financial market to ease trade tensions with Washington, Fan said the reforms were necessary but would not come quickly.
“The reforms may change the position of the other side, but it will take some time. It’s not a short-term issue. It’s a midterm issue,” Fan said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires at the end of this month.