Auto sales in China rose 62 percent to 1.22 million vehicles last year, according to Automotive Resources Asia, an industry consultant. US auto exports to China rose almost 90 percent, the US Commerce Department said.
GM, Ford Motor Co and Volkswagen, Europe's largest carmaker, are boosting Chinese production to meet demand.
Exports of US engineering and construction machinery to China rose 58 percent last year from the previous year, benefiting companies such as Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of earthmoving equipment.
US sales to China of non-electric engines and motors rose more than 25 percent, sales of specialized manufacturing equipment rose more than a third, and aircraft sales rose 40 percent, the Commerce Department said.
"One year doesn't make a trend, but it's significant," said Bill Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official who now heads the National Foreign Trade Council, an exporters group representing Microsoft Corp, Ford, Citigroup Inc and hundreds of other US companies.
"It suggests the possibility of developing a healthy relationship where we're not necessarily in balance, but where there's some equity on both sides," Reinsch said.
The US remained a magnet for goods last year, and many products from China simply replaced those from other Asian countries, economists say.
Some imports are from US companies, such as auto-parts maker Delphi Corp, which have set up operations in China. Imports by US companies from their Chinese subsidiaries totaled 18 percent of all imports from China in 2001, up from less than 11 percent a decade earlier, Commerce Data show.
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the US economy, grew 3.1 percent last year after slowing to 2.5 percent growth in 2001, the Commerce Department reported today.
"We have a growing China taking more and more US exports -- that's a very positive thing -- and US consumers benefit from cheaper products imported from China," said Catherine Mann, at the Institute for International Economics, a policy study group.
"We win both selling and buying."
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