The commercial ties between China and developing nations is undertaking subtle changes as competition among them gets increasingly fiercer, a senior trade official said Friday.

Citing textile as an example, Vice Minister of Commerce Wei Jianguo said if China's textile exports continued to grow 21 percent yearly with Bangladesh, Pakistan and Cambodia climbing 5 percent on average, China would take over more than 80 percent of the textile export market of developing nations by 2020.

Such export boom of China would add pressure to the employment and development of other developing countries and lead to more frequent trade disputes, Wei said while commenting on the country's foreign trade in Beijing.

He said China would complement its trade policies with strengthened foreign aid, debt waiver and enlarged imports and properly handle trade disputes with developing countries.

An July report from the United Nations World Food Program showed that China's total food donations climbed 260 percent year-on-year in 2005 and was surpassed only by those of the US and EU.

China's foreign aid was also said to have quadrupled in past decade. "China's foreign trade volume may probably count as the world's largest provided its export growth keeps outpacing the world average by four percent to remain above 10 percent in 15 years," Wei said.

The Asia's second largest economy raked in US$1.42 trillion in imports and exports last year, the third largest only after the US and Germany.

Wei noted that this rapid trade expansion drove up China's economy but also intensified its friction with global trade partners. "Peace, development and cooperation are the main principles we will abide by to improve commercial ties with other nations," he added.

To prevent frictions concentrating on certain markets, the Ministry of Commerce has urged domestic companies to diversify their export market and use technical innovation to lift up the value-added of export goods.

Official data revealed that only a small portion of China's export flow to emerging markets. The aggregated market shares held by China in Russia, Italy, Australia and Canada for instance was only 1.4 percent.

Neighboring countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and India account for only one percent.

As nearly 55 percent of China's exports were carried out by foreign invested companies or low-end processing companies, Wei said that the title of "World Production Center" couldn't secure China's say in global trade.

Although China is a major exporter of DVDs, only nine of the 57 core DVD production technologies were grasped by Chinese manufacturers, which means Chinese workers remain in the lower echelon of world trade, he said.

When it comes to imports, China has little say in the pricing of energy and resources products despite its heavy purchase.

From January to November last year, China paid US$11.81 billion more for crude oil, US$6.21 billion more for steel and US$1.46 billion more for iron ore simply because of price hikes, as an official price monitor report revealed.

Looking to the future, Wei held that surplus, frictions and commercial ties to be adjusted would be the crucial issues to affect China's trade health.
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(Xinhua News Agency September 2, 2006)