"The fact that we may be moving away from a rule-based trade sounds almost too terrible to even have a risk for," warned Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) board member Leif Johansson, during a panel discussion hosted by CGTN's Tian Wei at the 2018 Boao Forum.

"There's right now a very heated discussion going on, certainly; in that lies the risk of a trade war," Johansson, who served as chairman of Ericsson and president of the Volvo Group, added. "I would argue very much that it would be good for everyone to sit down, calm down, take time out and to start looking at the rules." 

Johansson suggested that "the rules are not bad as they are. There may be need of reform in the rules but then you can argue, sit down in a diplomatic way and agree with it."

The other panelist, Leslie Maasdorp, vice president of the New Development Bank, agreed with his opinion and said, "We need cool heads around the table." He pointed out that a "trade war today verses fifty, eighty years ago is a very different proposition. ... If you look at the global value chain, not all the IPs come from one country, so it's very difficult to push this to a logical conclusion because the world is so integrated and interconnected."

At the beginning of April, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer announced that the US would release a list of some 1,300 products that could be targeted with a 25 percent tariff – worth a total of 50 billion US dollars – based on the results of an investigation into China's alleged theft of US intellectual property. The following day, Beijing announced that it would fight fire with fire. China published a list of US imports, again worth 50 billion US dollars, on which it would levy a 25 percent tariff. China’s hit list was smaller but carefully targeted to hurt sensitive US sectors, such as soyabean farming and the automobile industry. A trade war between China and the US has become one of the major topics of the 2018 Boao Forum.

While politicians are trying to convince the public that a trade war is black and white, both Johansson and Maasdorp stressed the opposite. "It is anything but black and white. Different industries will react differently. Different countries will react differently," Johannson said. "The picture is complex and it will take decades for organizations to change if new regimes come in."