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China calls for talks over trade conflict
(Reuters/China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-16 19:41
Don't overplay trade friction, say analysts
Sino-US trade frictions should not be overplayed and positive trends ignored,
Chinese experts said yesterday in response to a United States' review on its
trade relations with China.
On Tuesday, the US Trade Representative Office released its first
top-to-bottom review of Sino-US trade in five years and it suggests that the
administration take a tougher stance against China in trade and rigorously
enforce trade laws.
US Trade Representative Rob Portman criticized Beijing for "failure to
enforce intellectual property rights, its protection and support for certain
domestic industries and its refusal to fulfil certain market-opening
commitments," which he believed "helped fuel the huge US trade gap with China."
Portman proposed a new chief counsel for China trade enforcement within his
office the first such position mooted by the agency for a single country.
While the proposed tougher stance has been making the headlines of many US
papers, the general thrust of the report is positive, said Mei Xinyu, a trade
expert at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Co-operation
attached to the Ministry of Commerce.
The report acknowledged that the United States benefits from trade with
China, adding that US exports to China had grown at a rate five times that for
the rest of the world since 2001. It also said China has become the
fourth-biggest US export destination.
While there will be friction, both sides should handle it calmly, Mei said,
adding that is unfair for the United States to blame China for its huge trade
deficit.
"Both sides should work to find pragmatic ways to address the deficit. For
example, as China has proposed many times, the United States should ease its
rigid controls on technology exports," Mei said.
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