FM: US should stop politicizing trade issues

The United States should stop politicizing economic and trade issues and evaluate the efforts and achievements made by Chinese enterprises in protecting intellectual property in an objective and fair way, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday.

He made the remark after AliExpress and the WeChat e-commerce ecosystem, two China-based online markets, were identified for the first time by the US Trade Representative's Office as "notorious" markets for counterfeiting and piracy.

The office said in a statement issued on Thursday that China-based online markets Baidu Wangpan, DHGate, Pinduoduo and Taobao continue to be listed, as well as nine physical markets located within China.

"I want to stress that China highly values the protection of intellectual property and our achievements in this aspect are there for all to see,"Wang told reporters at a regular news briefing in Beijing.

According to the spokesman, the number of invention patents granted last year to applicants from foreign countries reached 110,000, a year-on-year increase of 23 percent, and more than 194,000 trademarks were registered by foreign applicants, an increase of 5.2 percent from the previous year.

As for US applicants, the number of granted invention patents increased by 32.1 percent while that of registered trademarks increased by 17.3 percent, he added.

"The growth shows that foreign enterprises are confident of China's intellectual property protection and the business environment here," Wang said.

The Ministry of Commerce on Friday said in an online statement that it is irresponsible and not objective for the US to use ambiguous terms such as "allegedly" or "reportedly" to describe Chinese companies in the report, which contains neither conclusive evidence nor sufficient proof, adding that China firmly opposes the addition of the enterprises and markets to the US notorious markets list.