CHINA appreciates the U.S. position on Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said yesterday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday on Twitter that he and President Xi Jinping are working together to give ZTE “a way to get back into business, fast,” and the U.S. Commerce Department has been instructed to work on the issue.

In response, Lu said China is keeping close communication with the United States on specific details and issues that the U.S. side is concerned about.

Lu announced Xi’s special envoy, Vice Premier Liu He, will visit the United States from today to Saturday for economic and trade consultations.

Liu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, will visit at the invitation of the U.S. administration.

Liu will continue to hold consultations with the U.S. economic team headed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on economic and trade issues, Lu said.

ZTE, one of the world’s largest telecom equipment makers, was forced to suspend its main operations worldwide after the U.S. Commerce Department prohibited U.S. companies from exporting products to it in April.

Following the ban, ZTE said it was making active communications with relevant parties to seek a solution to the issue, and stressed that it attached significant importance to export control compliance.

The Chinese public and government are greatly concerned about the fate of the company, which hires some 70,000 people across the globe.

The incident also triggered in China extensive discussions about the necessity and urgency to develop a reliable domestic chip industry.

During the latest China-U.S. economic and trade consultations held in Beijing in early May, the Chinese side lodged “solemn representations” with the United States over the ZTE case.

The U.S. delegates responded that they “attach importance to” China’s stance and will report it to Trump, according to a spokesperson with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

The ZTE ban is also expected to cause sizable losses for the company’s key American suppliers in both revenues and jobs.

According to an April statement by California-based optical gear maker NeoPhotonics, the company’s estimated annualized revenue with ZTE and its supply chain partners would have grown up to 5 percent without the exports ban. Business with ZTE and its supply chain partners accounted for approximately 3 percent of NeoPhotonics’ total revenue in 2017.

As the fourth-largest mobile phone supplier in the U.S. market, ZTE said it has supported an estimated 130,000 high-tech jobs in America.(Xinhua)