Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet top US trade authorities: report

Beijing, Feb 13 (AFP) Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to meet with top US officials in Beijing this week, a report said Wednesday, as the world's two greatest economies rush to patch up their trade differences before an approaching due date.

Xi will meet on Friday with authorities including US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who are in the capital for crunch talks towards an exchange accord, the South China Morning Post announced.

"Xi is planned to meet both Lighthizer and Mnuchin on Friday," it stated, quoting a source briefed on the arrangements.

The US authorities and their Chinese partners meet for chats on Thursday and Friday.

They are under a lot of pressure to seal an agreement in front of the March 1 due date set by Donald Trump, however the US president said Tuesday that he was available to expanding that, contingent upon advancement in Beijing.

"In case we're near an arrangement, where we want to make a genuine article ... I could see myself letting that slide for a brief period," Trump told journalists at the White House.

In December, Washington suspended for three months Trump's arrangement to build taxes on USD 200 billion worth of Chinese imports - to 25 percent from the present 10 percent - to permit time for exchanges.

Mnuchin told reporters in Beijing late on Tuesday he was eager to start.

"We're anticipating a few imperative long periods of talks," he said to sum things up comments.

He and different US officials left their hotel on Wednesday without making substantive comments.

The Chinese delegation will be driven by Vice Premier Liu He, China's point man on trade, and central bank governor Yi Gang.

The two sides said major progress was made in talks a month ago in Washington, however subsequent comments have been less idealistic, jarring financial markets and intensifying worries about how the dispute will affect delicate world development.

But global stocks rose after Trump's hint of a due date extension.

Washington is requesting broad changes to Chinese practices that it says are out of line, including theft of US technology and intellectual property, and myriad barriers that foreign companies face in the Chinese domestic market.

China has offered to boost its buys of US imports yet is widely expected to oppose calls for major changes to its industrial policies such as slashing government subsidies.

The two nations have already slapped tariffs on more than USD 360 billion of every two-way exchange, which has weighed on their assembling segments and shaken global financial markets.

The International Monetary Fund cautioned on Sunday of a possible global economic "storm" as world development conjectures plunge, citing the US-China exchange push as a key pivot point.