The United States is mistaken in choosing China as its trade sanction target, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday at a press conference after meeting with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia.

China on Wednesday unveiled a list of products worth $50 billion imported from the U.S. that will have an additional tariff of 25 percent, including soybeans, automobiles, and chemical products.

This was a countermeasure in response to U.S. move of publishing measures against Chinese imports also worth nearly $50 billion on Tuesday.

Wang said the countermeasure is a legitimate self-defense move for China as a sovereign state.

The Chinese and the U.S. economies are deeply interrelated and both sides’ interests are highly intertwined. The U.S. is wrong in attempting to benefit from protectionism. Both China and the U.S are the world’s major countries who should respect each other and treat each other as equals. The U.S. is also wrong in picking China as its target of trade sanctions, Wang Yi said.