A United States business delegation to China signed four major deals on Monday, the first day of their trip, as part of a US initiative to address its trade imbalance with China by increasing exports.
Motorola signed a deal worth US$1.6 billion to sell mobile phones to China. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, the US Trade and Development Agency and a subsidiary of Han's Technologies Inc also clinched deals concerning entertainment, environmental protection and water treatment. The value of the contracts was not disclosed.
The total value of the contracts is small compared with the huge trade imbalance, but it is an indication the United States is seeking to narrow its deficit with China through exports rather than limiting imports.
Reducing imports from China is not the "correct strategy", said US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez who is heading a delegation of 25 representatives of major firms in search of sales opportunities in the vast Chinese market.
Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai told Gutierrez that he expected the US delegation trip would reap "great fruits".
The undervalued RMB has long been blamed for the China-US trade imbalance, but China argues the imbalance is the result of the transfer of manufacturing from developed countries under the trend of globalization.
China's trade surplus with the United States grew to US$102.2 billion in the first nine months of this year. Gutierrez told the US media before his departure that US firms had significant opportunities to increase their exports to China.
According to Chinese statistics, US exports to China have increased by an average of 21 percent annually over the past five years, much higher than its export growth rate to other parts of the world.
It is widely accepted that China has become the fourth largest export destination of the United States and will climb to its third largest overseas market next year.
The US government is conducting research in China to provide information for their companies.
The US Department of Commerce was reportedly to have provided American companies thorough analysis reports on China's telecommunications, water treatment, automobile parts and power generation sectors.
Gutierrez told Bo during their meeting that the recent changes in American domestic politics will not affect the overall development of China-US economic and trade relations, dispelling the concerns of some Chinese officials that the Democratic Party's takeover of US Congress may pose a threat to the Bush Administration.
High-level economic official exchanges between the US and China have become more frequent this year. US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson will visit China next month for the first round of China-US economic strategic talks, a new mechanism established in September in an effort to facilitate bilateral economic links.
Paulson is expected to lead another high-powered group consisting of government decision makers covering almost all crucial economic sectors.
As the US government takes the initiative to expand exports, enterprises also look to ease restrictions on the country's high-tech exports to China.
Vaughn Gilbert, spokesman of Westinghouse, a well-known power plant supplier, told the Xinhua-run newspaper International Herald Leader that the American government supported its expansion into the Chinese nuclear power industry. Opposition only comes from the voices of a few people, he was quoted as saying.
Gutierrez listed several achievements China has made in intellectual property protection but he urged China to make "faster and better" improvements to secure the interests of US firms.
In Monday's entertainment deal, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment signed an agreement with Zoke Culture Group, the largest video distributor in China, to push for authorized and affordable DVDs.
Zoke boasts a professional anti-piracy team, which has cooperated with governments and cracked piracy cases involving hundreds of thousands of pirated video products.
The company-level cooperation between two countries is seen as another "strategic tool" in the fight against piracy in China.
Gutierrez will leave for Shanghai on Wednesday for further business promotion. The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai has arranged a luncheon to welcome Gutierrez on Wednesday, where he will deliver a speech.
(Xinhua News Agency November 15, 2006)
