Beijing has no knowledge about US President Donald Trump reportedly having a previously unknown bank account in China and strongly opposes any attempts to drag itself into foreign electoral processes, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday
BEIJING (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2020) Beijing has no knowledge about US President Donald Trump reportedly having a previously unknown bank account in China and strongly opposes any attempts to drag itself into foreign electoral processes, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Trump had assets in one of Chinese banks which he did not mention in his public financial disclosures. Citing an analysis of the US president's tax records, the newspaper reported that an account controlled by Trump International Hotels Management L.L.C. had paid over $180,000 in taxes in China from licensing deals in the period from 2013-15.
"I'm not aware of that. China firmly opposes the act of anyone in the United States to drag China into its presidential elections," the spokesman said at a briefing, when asked to comment on the newspaper's reports.
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, was cited by The New York Times as saying that the company had opened the account after establishing an office in China to pay local taxes and that the office had remained inactive since 2015 as "no deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialized."
Besides China, the US president maintains personal assets on bank accounts held under corporate names in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the newspaper reported.
China continues to be a key part of the discourse around the US 2020 presidential campaign. Under Trump's presidency, the US and China locked horns in a brutal economic rivalry commonly labeled a "trade war." The Trump administration also blames the Chinese government for being responsible for spreading the coronavirus worldwide.
