WASHINGTON (REUTERS) – The Trump administration on Tuesday (Nov 20) said that China has failed to alter its “unfair” practices at the heart of the United States-China trade conflict, adding to tensions ahead of a high-stakes meeting later this month between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The findings were issued in an update of the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) “Section 301” investigation into China’s intellectual property and technology transfer policies, which sparked US tariffs on US$50 billion (S$68.8 billion) worth of Chinese goods that later ballooned to US$250 billion.

“We completed this update as part of this Administration’s strengthened monitoring and enforcement effort,” USTR Robert Lighthizer said in a statement.

“This update shows that China has not fundamentally altered its unfair, unreasonable, and market-distorting practices that were the subject of the March 2018 report on our Section 301 investigation.”

In the update, USTR said it found that China had not responded “constructively” to the initial Section 301 reports and failed to take any substantive actions to address US concerns. It added that China had made clear it would not change its policies in response to the initial investigation.

USTR said that China was continuing its policy and practice of conducting and supporting cyber-enabled theft of US intellectual property and was continuing discriminatory technology licensing restrictions.

The update said that despite the relaxation of some foreign ownership restrictions, “the Chinese government has persisted in using foreign investment restrictions to require or pressure the transfer of technology from US companies to Chinese entities”.

The report comes as the Trump administration and top Chinese officials are discussing possible ways out of their trade war and negotiating details of the Trump-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G-20) leaders summit in Buenos Aires at the end of this month.

But acrimonious trade rhetoric between the governments of the world’s two largest economies has been increasing in recent days, spilling over into an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit last weekend.

A top Chinese diplomat said on Tuesday that the failure of Apec officials to agree on a communique from the summit was a result of certain countries “excusing” protectionism, a veiled criticism of Washington’s tariffs.

US Vice-President Mike Pence said last Saturday that the US would not back down from the trade dispute, and might even double tariffs, unless Beijing bowed to American demands.

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