Top Chinese economic official to hold talks in US

BEIJING: China's Vice Premier Wang Qishan will visit the United States next week and will discuss bilateral trade issues with top US officials, the foreign ministry announced Tuesday.

Wang, who is in charge of economic and trade matters, will co-chair the Sino-US Joint Committee on Commerce and Trade when it meets in Los Angeles on September 17, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told journalists.

Wang will co-chair the meeting with US Trade Secretary Carlos M Gutierrez and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Jiang said.

China's currency and its bulging trade surplus have dominated the trade agenda between the two nations recently.
But as China's exports to the United States slow, the US subprime crisis could be the focus of the upcoming discussions.

Chinese exports to the United States in the first half of the year totalled 116.8 billion dollars, according to a recent report in the media. This was up 8.9 per cent from the same period last year, but the growth rate was nine percentage points lower than a year earlier.

The trend was partly due to weaker demand after the subprime crisis hit the US economy, while a stronger Chinese currency also made the nation's exports more expensive for American consumers, according to the paper.

The yuan has appreciated by around 20 per cent against the dollar since China delinked its currency from the greenback in July 2005. The Chinese government has warned that the nation's trade surplus, a source of bitter friction with major trading partners, was likely to shrink in 2008 for the first time in five years on weakening exports.