• Li Chenggang replaces vegetables trade tsar Wang Shouwen.
• Wang has been China’s highest trade negotiator since 2022.
• The United States insists that China should adopt any trade agreement first.

China unexpectedly appointed a new trade negotiator key on Wednesday to resolve any negotiations escalating tariff war with the United States and the United States to get its Trade Trade and Trade Barrier Wang Wang to the World Trade Organization (WTO) with his special envoy.

Li Chenggang, 58, was a former assistant secretary of Commerce during the first administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who took over as the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau from 59-year-old Wang.

It is not clear whether Wang, who served as the second place in the Ministry of Commerce in 2022, has held a position elsewhere. As of Wednesday, the department’s website said his name was no longer the department’s leadership team.

The ministry did not respond immediately Reuters Requests for comments on this change, which are not explained in the HR statement.

Sources from Beijing’s foreign business community said Wang was considered a tough negotiator and clashed with U.S. officials at previous meetings.

“He is a very intense bulldog,” the source said.

As Beijing has adopted a strong trade attitude in exacerbating Washington’s trade war, Trump’s strong position on tariffs triggered by goods imported from China is that Beijing has taken a strong position in intensifying the trade war.

Sudden changes also occurred in the middle of President Xi Jinping’s trip to Southeast Asia to consolidate economic and transactional relations with neighboring countries in a standoff with the United States.

Commerce Minister Wang Wenao visited Vietnam, one of the top officials in Malaysia and Cambodia this week.

Alfredo Montufar-Helu, senior adviser at the Center for Conference Committee, said that given the rapid escalation of trade tensions and the experience of fitting with the King’s experience, the change since the first Trump administration negotiated with the United States is “very sudden and potentially destructive” given the rapid escalation of trade tensions.

“We can only speculate why this happened at this exact moment, but given China’s top leadership, given how tensions continue to escalate, they need others to break the deadlock between the two countries, in which both countries will find themselves and eventually start negotiations,” he said.

Unlike other countries that have responded to Trump’s punitive tariff plans by seeking bilateral deals with Washington, Beijing has raised its taxes on U.S. goods and has not sought negotiations but negotiated based on mutual respect and equality.

Washington said on Tuesday that Trump is willing to reach a trade deal with China, but Beijing should take the first step, insisting that China needs “our money.”

“Tariff shock”

At a WTO meeting in Geneva in February, Lee criticized the tariffs of U.S. trading partners, including China, warning that the move had triggered a “tariff shock.”

“The US’s unilateral approach blatantly violates WTO rules, exacerbates economic uncertainty, undermines global trade and may even subvert the rules-based multilateral trading system. China firmly opposes this and urges the US to abolish its illegal acts.”

Lee has held several key jobs in the Ministry of Commerce, such as overseeing the treaty, the department of law and fair trade, and has academic backgrounds at elite Peking University and the University of Hamburg in Germany.

“From his resume, Lee is a typical Chinese technologist with extensive experience in trade issues with the Ministry of Commerce and the WTO,” said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

“It seems like a regular promotion without any abnormality, but now is clearly a sensitive period due to tensions in the United States-China.”

According to state media readings for the conference, Lee attended the China Private Entrepreneurs Forum on March 31 as the “leader” of the Ministry of Commerce, one of the initial official tips for the conference, soon to move to a new role.