Opinion     

US must ease restrictions on exports to China

People's Daily, November 9, 2011

• One prevailing view in the media is that the monetary act approved recently by the U.S. Senate is aimed solely at China, but Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming does not agree with this viewpoint.

  Chen said that the monetary act is aimed at all countries holding the U.S. dollar. He hopes the monetary act will not be signed into law. If it does, the United States will set a poor precedent of violating international treaties and obligations.

  "I do not hope trade frictions or even a trade war will occur, because it will be harmful to both China and the United States and will damage the interests of the enterprises and people of the two countries directly," Chen said.

  Chen said that if China's overall foreign trade is balanced but there is a relatively severe imbalance with some large country, it does not mean there is something wrong with the exchange rate.

  Chen gave his analysis of the source and structure of China's trade surplus with the United States. In 2010, China's trade surplus from the United States almost accounted for China's whole trade surplus.

  Some 75 percent of the trade surplus with the United States came from foreign-invested companies, while China's state-owned enterprises had zero trade surplus. Therefore, it is completely groundless to claim that China helps its state-owned enterprises to create a trade surplus.

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