The Chinese ambassador to the European Union favored a confrontational style against Donald Trump's protectionist course to show the US president's policies are wrong. "China will fight back firmly," Zhang Ming said.

The trade war between the US and China isn't likely to end soon. The Chinese ambassador to the European Union told Handelsblatt China would respond in kind to US protectionist measures.

"A policy of compromise or appeasement would only be counterproductive,' Zhang Ming said. "We must have the determination to show the initiator of the trade war that this is a wrong thing and it cannot go ahead."

Indeed, the Asian country fired back immediately on Friday, hitting US shipments of soybeans and cars imported into China after Donald Trump's administration had slapped a 25 percent levy on $34 billion of Chinese goods entering the US.

China would do everything possible to prevent a trade war, the Chinese diplomat said. "But if the threat is actually turned into reality, and the trade war is imposed on us, China will fight back firmly as well."

Everyone would lose from the conflict, he said. "Once the trade war actually breaks out, nobody can be a winner, neither China, nor the EU. America itself would not be a winner either. (…) In case of an outbreak of a trade war, the whole world economy would be severely affected."

Mr. Zhang, who was China's deputy foreign minister from 2013 to 2017, said that at an EU-China summit in Bejiing on July 16-17, the two blocs hoped "to send a positive message on upholding the multilateral trading system."