This month, two US senators Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez have come to China to talk about bilateral trade, or RMB appreciation and IPR protection issues to be specific. ����

Analysts say these activities show that the US worries about the large amount of trade deficit with China.

Statistics from China show that the Sino-US trade volume last year reached 211.6 billion US dollars, 25% more than the previous year, China's trade surplus was nearly 114.2 billion US dollars.

Analysts say that such a huge surplus resulted from industrial restructuring of both countries and global division of labor.

According to a report in the US trade representative office in February, while US trade deficit with China became larger, its trade deficit with other Asian countries has reduced. In fact, US import of Chinese products are all labor intensive such as toys, garments and low-tech information products that the US has stopped producing or reduced production, thus do not constitute competition to the US domestic production. US multinational corporation's production and sales in China has substantially replaced its headquarters production in the US. This has reduced its export to China while exports of US products in China to America helped increase US imports from China. All in all, US trade deficit with China is getting larger.

Over the past ten years, US trade deficit with China ranged between 20% and 25% while the US trade deficit with other countries and regions were much larger. This means the main reason for the US trade deficit is the changes in these countries and regions.

At present, almost all the WTO members are concerned with the US deficit and forecast that the huge trade deficit will cause US trade protectionism. While deliberating the US trade policies, WTO has pointed out that the US trade deficit should not blame China, the US needn't worry too much about the deficit, if it really cares, then it should concern the global trade imbalance.

There is even a voice in the US saying that there is a lack of equity and equality and consistency in the Sino-US trade. In fact, as members of the WTO, both China and the US should enjoy the same trade opportunities; the Sino-US economic and trade balance should be an overall balance between trade and investment, cargo trade and service trade. China has become the second largest importer in the world and the US fastest growing export market. The trade deficit issue can only be readjusted and solved in the process of ��making a bigger pie'. To set more restrictions on China's exports is not the right way to solve the problem. While China got huge surplus, the US also got a lot of benefit for consumers, employment and expansion of US business in China.

Analysts suggest that to balance the Sino-US trade, the best way should be to relax US export restrictions to China, especially in high-tech field so that the trade deficit will be reduced. Otherwise, many US enterprises will lose their chance to export to China and China's efforts to import from the US will also be affected.

With the globalization of world economy, it does nobody's good to resort to the ��big sticks', including the one who raises them.

By People's Daily Online