By Laurie Chen
BEIJING (Reuters) -China has formalised the new role of top trade negotiator Li Chenggang, dropping him from the post of permanent representative to the World Trade Organization, the official news agency Xinhua said on Monday.
The news come after tension between the world’s two biggest economies flared after the United States added more foreign companies under its sanctions and China set wide-ranging export curbs on rare earths and critical materials in response.
The announcement, following Li’s April appointment to the job of lead international trade negotiator, was part of a routine list of recent ambassadorial changes approved by President Xi Jinping.
China’s current representative to the WTO is Li Yongjie, who presented her credentials on September 29, the trade body said on its Weibo social media account. Beijing sometimes makes no formal announcement when an official takes up a new role.
As former WTO envoy and assistant minister of commerce, Li Chenggang, 58, played a key role in four successive rounds of U.S.-China trade talks as the two seek to avert a bruising trade war after imposing tariffs of more than 100% on each other in April.
Last week U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took the unusual step of singling Li out by name, describing him as “unhinged” at a public event.
“Perhaps the vice minister who showed up here with very incendiary language on Aug. 28 has gone rogue,” Bessent added at a separate press conference on Wednesday after the “unhinged” remark.
“This individual was very disrespectful.”
Li’s August visit to Washington ruffled feathers in the Trump administration, as he arrived uninvited, demanded senior-level meetings, “restated China’s false narratives and lectured the Americans,” said a source briefed on the matter who sought anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
XI, TRUMP SUMMIT EXPECTED
Bessent has since sought to scale down tension before an expected summit of President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this month on the sidelines of an APEC summit in South Korea.
In a video call on Friday with China’s economic tsar He Lifeng, both sides had “frank and detailed discussions” on U.S.-China trade, Bessent wrote on X.
Both men will meet next week in Malaysia, Bessent added, to try to forestall an escalation of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.
Li’s unexpected appointment in April, replacing veteran trade negotiator Wang Shouwen, came days after Beijing launched tariffs of 125% against Washington in its hardline stance early in the trade war.
China’s ambassador to the WTO for more than four years, Li had previously held several key jobs in the commerce ministry, including in departments overseeing treaties and law and fair trade.
A graduate of the elite Peking University and Germany’s Hamburg University, Li has an extensive knowledge of WTO laws.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen, Liz Lee and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Clarence Fernandez)
