The Trump administration is discriminating against Chinese state-owned enterprises seeking to expand in the U.S., according to the head of a top Chinese agency overseeing state assets valued at US$24 trillion.

“I hope the U.S. government can treat China’s state-owned enterprises the same as they treat the rest of the world,” Xiao Yaqing, chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), said in an interview with Bloomberg News in Davos, Switzerland. “We should all be treated on the same platform and should not be discriminated.”

Xiao’s remarks come as trade tensions grow between the world’s two largest economies. President Donald Trump, who in November called for a “fair and reciprocal” bilateral relationship on a trip to Beijing, has placed greater scrutiny on Chinese investments in the U.S.

Chinese acquisitions of U.S. companies dropped 56 per cent in volume to US$44.5 billion, dragged down by concerns about U.S. national-security deal reviews and shifts in China’s foreign investment policies. Deal lawyers attribute much of the slowdown to China’s tightened control on money leaving the country, but say U.S. scrutiny of China-based acquisitions has given some companies cause for hesitation.

Trump in September made a call to block a Chinese-backed investor from buying U.S.-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp. The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, or CFIUS, reviews foreign mergers and acquisitions for potential threats to national security.

Only four CFIUS-reviewed deals have ever been blocked by U.S. presidents, all of which involved a Chinese company or investor. Congress currently is debating a new legislation that would expand the scope of the CFIUS review process to include more deals.

CFIUS is primarily focused on investments involving Chinese state-owned or controlled investors and their investments in sensitive industries including finance and technology, Laura Fraedrich and Chase Kaniecki from U.S.-based law firm Jones Day wrote in a January article.

China’s SOEs command about 40 per cent of China’s industrial assets and create nearly 20 per cent of urban employment.