U.S. President Donald Trump could still possibly walk away from the negotiating table with China if he isn’t satisfied at the progress of talks between the two countries to resolve their trade war, according to a senior Trump administration official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said both sides were eager to reach an agreement, but significant issues were still unresolved ahead of the next round of trade talks which will get under way in Beijing on April 30 between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. Discussions include intellectual property, forced technology transfer, non-tariff barriers, agriculture, services, purchases, and enforcement, according to a White House statement. Liu will then lead a Chinese delegation to Washington for additional discussions starting on May 8. Negotiators have indicated they are close to a deal and U.S. President Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping would visit the White House “soon.”

The year-long trade war has weighed on confidence and dented shipments, with nine of the 10 gauges tracked by Bloomberg to assess the health of global trade below their average midpoint. Still, the world’s two biggest economies recently posted better-than-expected gross domestic product reports for the first quarter. Last week, the Trump administration said China had failed to bolster protection for intellectual property and open its market to more foreign companies, despite Beijing’s promises to reform. The U.S. kept China on a “priority watch list” of nations that don’t adequately protect IP rights, according to the annual report of the U.S.Trade Representative’s office on IP practices around the world.

Veteran negotiators warned that deals can often get lost in translation. Complications can arise from issues of language, interpretation and translation during negotiations. While both sides are negotiating in their native tongues with the help of simultaneous translation, the subsequent text will be translated into both English and Chinese. These translations will then be “scrubbed” by lawyers and technical translators in an effort to reach a final text that both sides are happy with. But history shows that this is rarely straightforward as ambiguity is hard to avoid in international trade deals, while experienced negotiators have said that trying to iron out arguments over words, phrases or even grammar can be “worse than pulling teeth”.

“It is very hard to enforce anything under the Chinese because their system is both complicated and relatively opaque, and there aren’t that many Mandarin speakers around that have the requisite technical trade and legal skills,” said Elena Bryan, who spent 17 years negotiating trade deals for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), and who now runs consultancy Pilot Rock Global Strategies. According to one account, the two sides had debated the suitability of a single word for two hours during agriculture talks via video conferencing. After failing to reach an agreement, they had to put it aside and move onto other topics, the South China Morning Post reports.

China will not only buy and manufacture cars, but have a significant impact on the automotive industry in the future, since it is “infinitely open” to technological progress, experts and industry leaders say. The Shanghai auto show, which closed last week, has attracted over 1,000 exhibitors from 20 countries and regions, showing the importance that carmakers attach to the Chinese auto market — the world’s largest. Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, Founder and Director of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, said that China has the best “economies of scale” in the market. The exhibition is widely regarded as the leading trade fair for the entire Asian region, since more than a quarter of all new cars manufactured by carmakers worldwide are bought in China, according to CAR.

Most German automobile manufacturers are offering exclusive products such as long versions of their car models, which are very popular with Chinese buyers. BMW presented the long version of its newest generation of the popular 3-series at this year’s Auto Shanghai, which will be exclusively offered on the Chinese market. With the A35 L, German automaker Daimler has also introduced a new long version of one of its popular models. “China is increasingly becoming a powerhouse for automotive technology,” Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess said before the start of this year’s show. New technologies, such as electric cars, autonomous driving and networked vehicles, are all being driven “very strongly” from China, Diess said. Volkswagen opened four new plants in the cities of Qingdao, Foshan and Tianjin in 2018 and has a total of 23 plants in China. In March, Daimler announced that the production of its Smart models will be entirely outsourced to China, in cooperation with the Chinese car manufacturer Geely.

According CAR, 1.18 million electric cars were sold in 2018 throughout China, accounting for more than half of global sales. Dudenhoeffer forecasts sales will hit 2.2 million this year. China has the “greatest dynamism” in terms of innovation, and the country is “infinitely open” to technological progress, Dudenhoeffer added. In addition to large car manufacturers, many Chinese startups have emerged, especially in the field of electrically powered cars, boosting a technology race, the Shanghai Daily reports.

The International Road Transport Union (IRU), the organization that manages “Transports Internationaux Routiers” (TIR) operations with United Nations’ authorization, is seeking to diversify its cooperation with China’s customs to further facilitate goods trade via more convenient road transport. Since China implemented the TIR transport initiative last May, it has opened 10 ports including Erenhot and Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia and Horgos and Irkeshtam in Xinjiang, that are appying TIR. This has already cut the costs and time of shipments between China and its trade partners in the European Union, Russia and Central Asia. Umberto de Pretto, Secretary General of the Geneva-headquartered organization, said the IRU is looking to have TIR rules applied to more ports in China in the future.

TIR currently is the only global customs transit system for moving goods across international borders. There are 76 contracting parties to the United Nations TIR Convention managed by the IRU. China ratified the UN TIR Convention in 2016, becoming the 70th contracting party. “Now we can move trucks from China to Europe in 12 days, and from southern China all the way to Spain, the longest way you can go, in 16 days, which is phenomenally quicker,” said de Pretto, adding that the TIR service enables goods to be shipped across continents in sealed loaded compartments through an internationally recognized customs agreement.

Umberto de Pretto attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, saying that the BRI infrastructure enhanced connectivity. “In the IRU, we appreciate every millimeter of road that is built because it will make it easier for us do our job,” he said. “As many countries involved in the development of the BRI still rely on trucks and coaches to transport goods and people, the demand for road transportation and modern road infrastructure will remain attractive for both logistics companies and facility project contractors in the long run,” added Luo Renjian, Researcher at the Institute of Transportation Research of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), as reported by the China Daily.

Foreign borrowers’ financial information will be recorded in China’s national credit system, and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is studying the feasibility of a cross-border information sharing mechanism to improve services for foreigners and prevent credit risks. Foreigners wishing to borrow money from financial institutions in China should register their nationality on personal credit reports, a new requirement of the PBOC, said Wang Xiaolei, Deputy Director of the PBOC Credit Reference Center. The central bank will notify foreigners before collecting the additional information, she said. Chinese financial institutions need to know about foreign borrowers’ previous credit records, including such activities in other countries, and to rate their credit history before issuing loans. Changes to the national credit system are being worked out.

The PBOC released a statement indicating that more credit information will be included in the system in order to accurately assess credit risks and minimize defaults. The information will cover payment history of utility bills, loans jointly borrowed by more than one person, and guarantee arrangements between individuals and corporations. The PBOC’s updated credit information system will help improve accuracy of information used by banks in their credit decision-making processes, Nicholas Zhu, Vice President and Senior Banking Analyst at Moody’s, told China Daily.

The national credit information database was launched in 2006, and is managed by the PBOC. It now covers information on 259.18 million enterprises and 990 million individuals. The central bank has issued a license to Baihang Credit, China’s only licensed market-based personal credit agency, to expand the system to all of society, including consumer credit information. Baihang uses big-data digital technology to process activities such as mobile phone usage, travel, locational data and purchasing history, the China Daily reports.

The service sector, IT and media industries have overtaken the education sector as major job sources for expats in China, according the 2019 Job Fair for Foreigners in Beijing, organized by the Foreign Talent Research Center and the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. The Job Fair attracted more than 500 expats with nearly 1,000 jobs available in a range of professions. The expat job market, once dominated by language teachers, has seen a major shift. Approximately half the jobs available at the fair were in the sales, media, marketing and IT sectors, including openings for journalists, brand and communication managers, and software engineers.

“A certain level of Mandarin proficiency is an advantage,” said Yang Jiayin, Project Manager of the research center. The best-paying jobs generally require the ability to speak Mandarin and salaries are higher compared to the same jobs without the language requirement.” Yang added that the income gap between expats and Chinese employees in the same positions has been reduced in past decades. The annual salary of a foreign employee would be five to 10 times higher than that of a Chinese employee in the 2000s, but is now reduced to about two to three times – partly because salaries paid to Chinese have risen faster than expat salaries. Data from the previous 10 years show that more than 50% of job seekers are from European countries, with a majority from Spain and Portugal, while about 25% are from Asian countries, with a majority from India.

Last year, China issued about 336,000 work permits to foreigners. There were more than 950,000 expats working in the country as of the end of last year, compared to only 180,000 in 1996. The increasing number of expats working in China has also boosted related services targeting foreigners, such as restaurants catering to foreigners’ tastes and fast food delivery services, the China Daily reports.