Bush: Import US beef, quicken yuan revaluation

Source: China Daily | 05-25-2007 10:55

US President George W. Bush, meeting a top-level Chinese trade delegation at the White House, said Thursday that China should import American beef, while repeating his administration's years-old demand that Beijing needs to rake up the value of its currency.

US President George W. Bush (C) and US Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson (R) welcome Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex before a meeting of the US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue in Washington, May 24, 2007. [Reuters]

Vice-Premier Wu Yi, who is leading a team comprising of a dozen Chinese cabinet ministers to attend the second round of China-America Strategic Economic Dialogue in Washington, said consultations will resolve trade disputes, should any disagreements crop up.

Bush agreed. Addressing a press corps at the White House, Bush said: "This is an important dialogue. And it's one that I thank the Chinese government for engaging in."

However, Bush urged China to quicken the pace of yuan revaluation. "One of the issues I emphasized to Madame Wu Yi ... was that we're watching very carefully as to whether or not they will appreciate their currency," Bush told reporters.

Washington also wanted Beijing to open its market wider to US goods. "One area where I have been disappointed is beef," Bush said to reporters after meeting with Wu. "They need to be eating US beef. It's good for them," he said. "They'll like it."

China stopped importing US beef when mad cow disease surfaced in the United States in 2003. The World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE, announced Tuesday that it now considered the United States as a "controlled risk" country for the feared bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow, a downgrading of its earlier assessment of the potential dangers.

To cut the mighty bilateral trade imbalance, which the US Commerce Department put at more than US$ 230 billion last year, China has been asking the United States to sell it more high-tech products, such as satellites and super computers, which Washington has imposed shipment restrictions on China. Wu Yi said the restrictions had effectively diminished US share in China's booming market.

US lawmakers who had met Wu Yi said they intend to move ahead with legislative measures, some of which propose levying punitive higher duties on Chinese imports, to offset "an unfairly cheap yuan" which they believe having made Chinese goods easier access to the US market.

Some of the world's renowned economists have said that inexpensive Chinese shipments have contributed to low U.S interest rates, making its economy (and other major world economies ) on a continuous growth, and enabled the majority of the middle-class American consumers to enjoy a quality livelihood.

Earlier, Chinese central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan, who is accompanying Wu Yi on the trip, said he believes the pace of reform of the yuan exchange rate "is good".

"We agree on the general direction of currency reform," Zhou told reporters Wednesday. "There is probably a little bit of difference on how fast we should go."

Since July 2005 when China's central bank de-linked the yuan with the US dollar, the value of the Chinese currency has risen more than 8 per cent.

Editor:Du Xiaodan