President Hu: China to work with US on trade gap
(Reuters/China Daily)
Updated: 2005-09-14 07:21

Chinese President Hu Jintao told US President George W. Bush Tuesday that China was willing to work with the United States to ease a growing trade imbalance and acknowledged there were frictions in the economic relationship, the Reuters reported.

"What I would like to stress here is that China does not pursue a huge trade surplus with the United States and we're willing to work with the United States to take effective measures to increase China's imports from the United States," Hu said at the start of a meeting with Bush on the sidelines of a United Nations summit.

Hu described the economic relationship between China and the United States as a driving force for the growing ties that he said were a win-win situation for the two countries.

But he added: "There's no denial that our bilateral trade has developed so fast and to such a large scale, it is inevitable that we may have some frictions."

The U.S. trade deficit with China set another record in July, hitting $17.7 billion.

On other issues, Hu promised to work on ways to prevent infringement of intellectual property rights and to seek progress in the six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Talks between the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions resumed this week in Beijing.

Bush said that he planned to address a range of issues with Hu in their bilateral meeting, including economic matters, North Korea's nuclear ambitions and Iran.