CHINA’S President Xi Jinping warned there are “no winners” in a trade war today as he kicked off a diplomatic tour of south-east Asia.

President Xi also repeated China’s commitment to global trade, contrasting it with tariffs slapped on many nations by United States President Donald Trump.

Although President Trump has paused some tariffs, he has kept in place 145 per cent taxes on China, the world’s second-largest economy after the US by nominal GDP, or largest adjusted for purchasing power parity.

“There are no winners in a trade war, or a tariff war,” President Xi wrote in an editorial jointly published in Vietnamese and Chinese media as he visited Vietnam.

He said: “Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains and open and co-operative international environment.”

Mr Xi was greeted on the tarmac by Vietnamese President Luong Cuong at the start of his two-day visit. 

Students of a drum art group performed as women waved the red and yellow Chinese, Vietnamese and Communist Party flags.

President Xi, also Communist Party of China general secretary, is set to meet Vietnamese Communist Party general secretary To Lam as well as Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Vietnam.

President Xi said he was looking forward to “using this visit as an opportunity for an in-depth exchange of views with the Vietnamese side on strategic and overarching issues critical to the direction of China-Vietnam relations and on international and regional issues of common concern.”

The two-day tour is President Xi’s fourth state visit to the country. 

The Chinese leader said the striving by two nations for national independence and liberation has led to a profound “friendship between Vietnam and China, because we are both comrades and brothers.”

He added that “the two countries have learned from each other and walked together to explore the socialism that meets their respective conditions, thus showing the world the bright prospects of the socialist system.”

Vietnam is the first stop of President Xi’s five-day visit to south-east Asia, which will also take him to Malaysia and Cambodia.