China is likely to become the third biggest importer of goods
from the United States within a year after five straight years as
the fastest growing US export market.
Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said on Thursday
that China was expected to overtake Japan as the third largest US
export market at the end of this year or early next year.
China's foreign trade volume reached US$ 1.17 trillion in the
first seven months of 2007, an increase of 24.4 percent over the
same period last year, according to customs sources.
The European Union remained its largest partner with a trade
value of US$ 190.1 billion, a growth of 28.5 percent over the same
period of last year, followed by the United States with US$ 167
billion, up 17.5 percent, and Japan with US$ 130 billion, up 15.2
percent.
Trade between China and the US reached US$ 262.7 billion in 2006
compared with US$ 2.5 billion in 1979 with farm produce and
machinery registering fast growth, said Gao.
China stood as the ninth largest export market of the US in 2001
and the fourth largest in 2005, while Canada was the largest in
2006, followed by Mexico and Japan.
The US began to see a trade deficit with China in 1983. In 1991,
China overtook Japan and became the second largest source of US
trade deficit. Since 2000, China had become the largest source of
US trade deficit, said Zhang Yansheng, director of the
International Economic Research Institute under the National
Development and Reform Commission.
Zhang said China's rocketing trade surplus unsettling the US,
which keeps pressing China to ease currency controls and import
barriers.
Official figures show China's trade surplus with the United
States jumped by 22 times from 1993 to 2006 when it hit US$ 144.2
billion.
In the first seven months of 2007, China's exports to the US
topped US$ 127.65 billion while imports from the U.S. reached US$
39.35 billion, according to official figures.
"Trade between China and the United States is beneficial to both
sides. The US generally imports what it doesn't produce from China,
which means these imports will in no way compete with US-made
products," said Assistant Minister of Commerce Wang Chao.
He said if the US abandoned Chinese goods, imports from other
countries may be more expansive.
US consumers saved more than US$ 600 billion by buying products
made by China in the last ten years, said Gao.
Research by the US-China Business Council shows bilateral trade
cooperation is expected to add US$ 1,000 to the disposable income
of each US family in 2010.
The unbalanced China-US trade was also the result of US
restrictions on exports of high-tech products to China and the
global manufacturing transfer from developed to developing
countries, Wang said.
His opinion echoed Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, who, on May 24
during a visit to the US, called for efforts from the United States
to improve the trade imbalance between the two countries, saying
China's efforts alone were not enough to achieve the goal.
The US trade deficit was the result of multifaceted and
complicated factors, but "we believe it is mainly of a shifted and
structural nature and is related to US export control against
China", she said.
From 2001 to 2006, the proportion of US high-tech exports to
China's aggregate high-tech imports decreased from 18.3 percent to
9.1 percent. If that ratio was kept at 18.3 percent, US exports to
China would have increased by at least US$ 70 billion, according to
the vice premier.
She said export control applied by the United States against
China had constrained exports of internationally competitive US
high-technology products to China.
"China has seen a trade surplus with the United States in its
manufacturing sector, but there are deficits in its primary and
tertiary sectors," said Wang.
By 2006, the United States had set up more than 50,000
enterprises in China with investment totaling more than US$ 54
billion while China had established more than 1,100 enterprises in
the United States with investment of nearly US$ 3 billion, Gao
said.
(Xinhua News Agency August 24 2007)
