More from the faxed statement by the Chinese commerce ministry
Earlier comments can be found here.
The commerce ministry says that China welcomes "friendly negotiations" with the US on intellectual property protection, but firmly opposes unilateral measures such as those outlined under Section 301 in the Trade Act of 1974.
It further says that China is still a developing country and it doesn't have a perfect system to protect intellectual property.
Trump has voiced out his dissatisfaction on China's alleged theft of US intellectual property earlier this year - which in part had a mention on the tariffs too.
Section 301 authorises an investigation into the IP theft, and also allows the US to impose retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods or other trade sanctions until China changes its policies.
