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Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged nations to join his country's Belt and Road trade initiative and warned against trying to achieve economic growth through protectionism.

Xi pledged $124 billion for the scheme which aims to bolster China's global economic leadership by expanding links between Asia, Africa, Europe and other parts of the world as the US pursues an "America first" policy under new president Trump.

"We need to improve policy coordination and reject beggar-thy-neighbor practices," Xi told world leaders at a summit on the trade initiative in Beijing.

"This is an important lesson that can be drawn from the global financial crisis and is still very relevant to the development of the world economy today.

"We need to seek win-win results through greater openness and cooperation, avoid fragmentation, refrain from setting inhibitive thresholds for cooperation or pursuing exclusive arrangements and reject protectionism."

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The Belt and Road initiative is being interpreted as China's alternative to the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which did not include China and President Donald Trump withdrew the US.

Xi said the Chinese initiative would be open to all and would coordinate its policies with the goals of other multilateral institutions such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN, African Union and the European Union.

The summit was attended by the leaders of a number of EU nations, including Italy, but European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said that EU member states would not sign ministerial statements connected to the meeting.

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"The European Commission, who has a mandate, who has the capacity to negotiate on behalf of member states on trade-related issues, we were not given a chance to negotiate on the text," he said

"But it's not an issue. The event, what Chinese authorities have organized here, and the joint understanding of what should be done and what must be done, is very positive."

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