BEIJING, 30 October 2003 — China, under pressure from the United States to narrow its ballooning trade surplus, will send a business delegation on a shopping mission to buy US goods, officials said yesterday.
The announcement came as US Commerce Secretary Don Evans, in Beijing to press Chinese leaders to speed up market reforms, said he had received assurances that Beijing will try to narrow the surplus, which was $103 billion last year and is on track to top that this year.
“We got a strong commitment from the premier (Wen Jiabao) that we are going to work very hard on closing the trade deficit gap between the US and China,” Evans told reporters in Beijing.
The head of a Chinese business group said China would send a trade delegation to buy US goods later this year. “Very shortly a Chinese government purchasing delegation will be going to the United States to buy US products,” said Wan Jifei, head of the China Chamber for International Commerce.
An official with China’s Ministry of Commerce confirmed the plans but declined to give details of who would be going or what products they would be shopping for. The group of executives from more than 100 Chinese firms and ministries would make the trip in early December, the official said. That would coincide with a visit by Premier Wen.
“This could be considered as one of ways” to solve the trade gap, said the official, who declined to be identified. US officials said they would welcome any Chinese purchases of American goods, but say their complaints are over systemic problems that are making it tough for US products to compete.
In the middle of an eight-day trip to China, Evans said he has focused on problems like protecting intellectual property rights in a country more than 90 percent of software, CDs and DVDs are counterfeit.
US manufacturers have also accused China of pumping up the trade deficit by keeping its yuan currency unfairly low, leading to job losses in US factories. Chinese officials point out that a key driver for booming exports to the United States is US firms who have invested in Chinese factories to serve their customers back home.
Wan said China was interested in buying telecoms, aviation, space and chemicals technology, and that the deficit was could be narrowed if the United States dropped a ban on the export to China of high-tech goods in those areas.
“China needs value-added, high-quality technology products,” Wan said. “But unfortunately the US government has imposed a lot of restrictions on high-tech exports to China, and there is no way for China to import these value-added and high-value products.”
Evans said high-tech trade would improve once the United States had access to the Chinese companies that wanted to buy the equipment. Washington wants to verify that technology like supercomputers and aircraft stamping machinery is not diverted to military use.
