Chinese President Xi Jinping says the international community needs to build consensus to solve growing tensions over trade, in remarks ahead of a high-stakes sit-down with U.S. President Donald Trump this week, ABC News reported quoting AP.

In a speech Wednesday to lawmakers in Spain, where Xi is conducting a state visit before attending the G-20 leaders' summit in Argentina, the Chinese leader says the world is facing "instability, uncertainty and hot topics without precedents in our history."

Xi said: "I think we are at a crossroads. In economic terms we need to decide if we are going to follow the economic globalization and free market or if we are going to choose unilateralism and protectionism."

He then called on the international community to unite to find consensus in order to "defend peace and prosperity in the world."

China and the U.S. have leveled over the last year a series of tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of imports from one another.