US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez yesterday called on China to open its markets to foreign goods and settle currency disputes, warning that it could face protectionist sentiment in the US if its record trade surplus keeps growing.
Gutierrez visited Chongqing in Sichuan Province, an industrial center in China's southwest, en route to Beijing for talks ahead of a possible Senate vote this week on proposed sanctions to punish China for manipulating its currency.
In a speech to university students, Gutierrez said Washington wants to see China give foreign competitors the same market access that its companies enjoy abroad, to adopt a more flexible currency and to stop piracy of intellectual property.
"The trade deficit worries people, and we don't want it to become so big that what happens is that people who want to isolate the US and who want to be protectionist may find a welcoming ear in the American people," Gutierrez said in the speech at Chongqing University.
Gutierrez is due in Beijing this week for talks ahead of a US Senate deadline of Friday to vote on a proposed bill to impose 27.5 percent tariffs on Chinese imports to the US unless Beijing moves to resolve the currency dispute.
Supporters of the measure hope it will push Beijing to raise the value of the yuan, which some US manufacturers say is as much as 40 percent too low and gives Chinese an unfair price advantage at the expense of foreign competitors.
Chinese authorities set the yuan's value against a basket of world currencies but restricted its movements, allowing it only to appreciate about 1 percent against the US dollar since it was revalued last July.
US President George W. Bush's administration faces growing pressure from Congress to deal with a US trade deficit with China that hit a record US$202 billion last year, a record with any country.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Gutierrez began his trip to Chongqing with a stop at an orphanage with teachers financed by US donations.
The secretary talked to and played with orphans during the one-hour visit to the Chongqing Children's Welfare Institution, which has children ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers.
Donations from US companies help to support a program that provides staff for the orphanage who teach reading, dancing and painting.
The secretary was led on a tour of the orphanage by Jenny Bowen, the San Francisco woman who founded the program after adopting two Chinese girls in the early 1990s.
"It's wonderful. They look very happy," Gutierrez said. If donors "haven't been here, they should be here. Quite a sight. We've got to get more people to know about this."
Gutierrez said last week that he would be "very candid" about US expectations in meetings with Chinese officials, and said Washington expected Beijing to be a "responsible stakeholder" in the global economy.
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