China-US trade imbalance won't last in long run: Ambassador

The Chinese Ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, has said that the trade imbalance between Beijing and Washington cannot and will not last in the long run.

Cui made the remarks at a panel discussion on "Forty Years of US-China Relations" hosted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a policy research organisation based here, reports Xinhua news agency.

Since the economies of China and the US were very interdependent, Beijing sincerely hopes that the US economy will continue to prosper. Likewise, the US has benefited from the development of the Chinese economy in the past four decades, Cui said.

As trade grows increasingly important in bilateral relations, Cui called for concerted efforts from China and the US to find solutions to short-term problems first and explore way-outs to long-term and structural problems at the same time.

Speaking about the bilateral trade imbalance, Cui said that it would be one-sided and too simple to see a deficit as a loss and a surplus as a gain.

Rather, the two sides were better advised to take into consideration such issues as industrial chains, value chains and international division of labor, he said.

The China-US trade imbalance cannot and will not last in the long run, Cui said. The ongoing trade consultations of the two countries cannot succeed when only one side's concerns were addressed, he said.

--IANS

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