The Financial Times reports that Washington is pressing Beijing to enter into multiyear contracts to buy US agricultural and energy imports as part of a broader trade deal aimed at reducing the $337bn bilateral trade deficit with China. But the move could mean taking Chinese business away from key US allies such the EU, Australia, Brazil and Argentina, whose exports could be hit by President Donald Trump's gambit. Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross is expected to discuss a list of products that China sources from other countries but could buy from the US on a visit to Beijing later this week. The list was presented to Beijing this month. Mr Ross's trip comes after Mr Trump announced a deal to allow Chinese telecoms firm ZTE, whose fate has been caught up in the trade talks, to resume operations in the US after paying a $1.3bn fine and taking other measures. The US push for long-term "product-by-product" contracts with China is intended to insulate an eventual trade deal from political pressures on either side of the Pacific, according to people familiar with the discussions. China, they say, would be less able to cancel purchases if it objected to comments by Mr Trump on sensitive subjects such as Taiwan. In the US, the move is intended to show Mr Trump is securing long-term results.

The New York Times reports that China's military announced on Sunday that it had dispatched warships to challenge two United States Navy vessels that sailed through waters in the South China Sea that China claims as its own. The Chinese confronted the American ships and warned them to leave, the Ministry of National Defense said in a statement posted on its website, but other details of the encounter were not immediately clear. The American vessels — the Higgins, a destroyer, and the Antietam, a cruiser — passed within 12 nautical miles of the Paracel Islands, an archipelago in the northern part of the disputed waters of the South China Sea off the coast of Vietnam. The high-seas confrontation, while not unprecedented, came as tensions have been rising between the United States and China on a number of fronts, from trade to the on-again-off-again talks with North Korea over its nuclear program. In recent months, China has appeared more determined to defend its claims in the South China Sea, reinforcing and arming its bases in the Paracel Islands and farther south in the Spratly Islands.