TEHRAN, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Countries subject to U.S. sanctions could join China in promoting globalization as a bid to create a world where no country is superior or inferior to any other state, Majidreza Hariri, president of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce and Industries, has said here.
Noting that China is Iran's top trade partner in terms of both exports and imports, Hariri told Xinhua in a recent interview that the sanctions imposed by Washington against Iran, however, have definitely had a negative impact on trade relations between Iran and China.
The U.S. government under former President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and unilaterally re-imposed sanctions on the Middle East country.
Transnational companies which have commercial ties with Iran also fell victim to the United States' uniliteral sanctions. According to the chamber head, since the reinstatement of the sanctions, Chinese companies like telecom giant Huawei have been sanctioned due to their relations with Iran.
"The sanctions prevent Iran from cooperating with major Chinese companies," he added, noting that Washington's Huawei ban was based on unfounded excuses, "with the main reason being the company's great technological advances, which threatened the U.S. technological interests in the world."
Despite all the sanctions, Iran's economic cooperation with China has continued, although at minimum capacities, he said, adding that "Iran could have seen worse days if China had stopped its economic cooperation with it in the aftermath of the reinstatement of the sanctions."
As another manifestation of the U.S. hegemony, since the West is intimidated by China's rapid development, it is spreading negative propaganda and fake news about the Asian country, Hariri noted.
That explains why his chamber, in addition to bolstering ties among Iranian and Chinese companies, has "a special focus on increasing direct contacts and interactions between the two countries' people and countering the negative propaganda spread by Western media against Iran and China," he said.
On China's role in globalization, Hariri said that "what has taken place through the implementation of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a manifestation of the promotion of mutual relations, which is totally different from what the United States did through the Marshall Plan in the aftermath of World War II."
China's definition of globalization, he said, includes the promotion of cooperation between countries in proportion to their respective capacities.
Such a pattern "enables each state to contribute to the global development as much as it can and benefit from the outcomes and achievements accordingly," he added.
"The type of inter-country relationship defined by China, which is manifested in the BRI, would promote a kind of globalization where no single country will be able to dominate any other state," Hariri said. Enditem
