India, China should counter unfair U.S. tariffs: Chinese envoy

China opposes the Trump administration’s 50% tariffs on India as those are “unfair and unreasonable” and New Delhi and Beijing should scale up economic ties to jointly counter the challenge, Chinese ambassador Xu Feihong said on Monday (September 8, 2025).

Mr. Xu said both India and China are victims of terrorism and Beijing stands ready to work with the international community, including New Delhi, to combat the challenge.

Mr. Xu said that important consensus was reached between India and China on the boundary issues and that bilateral relationship between the two sides has not been impacted by a third party, in an apparent reference to Pakistan.

He said the U.S. is using the tariffs as a kind of “weapon” to extract “exorbitant” costs from various countries, and India and China must cooperate with each other to navigate the situation.

“The trade war (was) started by the U.S. International trade should complement each other and lead to mutually beneficial win-win cooperation. The U.S. has long benefited from free trade. But now it is using the tariff as a kind of weapon or a tool,” he said.

“The U.S. is imposing tariffs of up to 50% on India. It is unfair, unreasonable. China firmly opposes it,” he said.

The Ambassador said India and China should scale up cooperation in the economic and trade domain. “We have 2.8 billion people, we have mega-size economies, mega-size markets and we have hard working people. Our economies are complementary,” he said.

Mr. Xu recalled Chinese President Xi Jinping’s remarks during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 31 on the margins of the SCO summit.

“Xi said China and India are at a very special stage of development and as the two biggest and very important emerging economies, China and India should focus on development and promotion of mutual support, mutual complementarity and mutual success,” he said.

“PM Modi said that India-China cooperation will make the 21st century a genuine Asian century. Both of them stressed the importance of economic cooperation between our two sides,” he said.

On terrorism, the envoy said that both China and India “share common interests in the field of counterterrorism”.

“China and India have maintained communications on counterterrorism through multilateral mechanisms such as the SCO, BRICS, and the Tianjin Declaration in which the (SCO) member states condemned terrorism in all its forms,” he said.

Mr. Xu said China welcomes “more Indian companies to promote their products and invest in China” and also hoped that “India could provide a fair, just, and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises.”