China downplays trade friction
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The United States capped some Chinese textile imports last month.
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(CNN) -- Ahead of a visit to Washington by Premier Wen Jiabao, China is playing down trade friction with the United States, saying it is willing to settle disputes through dialogue.
Bilateral trade between the two economies is running at about $120 billion a year, with the trade surplus heavily in China's favor.
That has provoked criticism among some U.S. lawmakers and industry groups worried about job losses. Last month, the United States put a cap on imports of some Chinese textiles and imposed tariffs on televisions.
Wen leaves for the United States on Sunday on what is his first official visit there since becoming premier. Trade will be high on the agenda.
He will meet U.S. President George W. Bush and deliver a speech at Harvard University during a tour that takes in New York, Washington and Boston.
Wen will also visit Canada and Mexico, before attending a meeting of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in Ethiopia. He returns to China on December 16.
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| GLOBAL TRADERS |
Two-way merchandise trade 2002
1. United States $1806 billion
2. Germany $1105.5 billion
3. Japan $752.4 billion
4. France $655.9 billion
5. China $620.8 billion
Source: WTO
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The most recent U.S. action against China on textiles and TVs was seen as motivated by U.S. elections in 2004, Reuters news agency reports.
In return, Beijing delayed trips to shop for U.S. soybeans, wheat and cotton and threatened to impose duties on some U.S. goods.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Friday that the recent trade friction will not overshadow achievements in two-way trade cooperation, according to the Web site of China's Xinhua news agency.
The United States scrapped controversial steel tariffs 16 months ahead of schedule on Thursday, averting a trade war that threatened to strain ties with Europe and Asia.
The tariffs had been declared illegal by the World Trade Organization (WTO) last month.
China, which joined the WTO at the end of 2001, welcomed the U.S. decision, with a statement expected later Friday from its commerce ministry.
China was willing to settle any disputes through dialogue and would help create favorable conditions for future trade development, Xinhua quoted Wang Youli, an analyst from a Ministry of Commerce think-tank, as saying.
"Sino-US trade will progress despite the disputes," he said.
China's fast-growing exports to the United States have come in for criticism among some U.S. lawmakers, who have blamed the country's fixed exchange rate regime for keeping Chinese exports artificially cheap and stealing U.S. jobs.
The Xinhua report stressed growing interdependence between the two economies, whose bilateral trade from January to October was up 30.7 percent on a year earlier, at $102.48 billion.
The United States is now China's second-largest trading partner after Japan. It imported nearly $75 billion worth of Chinese goods in the first 10 months, Xinhua said.
China bought some $27 billion worth of U.S. goods including planes and machinery in that period, a 25.7 percent jump from the previous year, it said.
