China Calls for Balanced Trade with ROK: Spokesman

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, July 09, 2003

China Calls for Balanced Trade with ROK: Spokesman

China hopes the Republic of Korea will do more to balance bilateral trade as it has multi-billion dollar trade deficit with the ROK, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said Tuesday.

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China hopes the Republic of Korea will do more to balance bilateral trade as it has multi-billion dollar trade deficit with the ROK, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said Tuesday.

The subject had been raised in talks between Chinese President Hu Jintao and visiting ROK President Roh Moo-hyun, said Kong.

Kong said Roh replied during the talks that the ROK would treat the issue seriously, and hoped to close the gap through close bilateral economic exchanges and cooperation.

Since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in 1992, China's trade deficit with the ROK totaled 82.4 billion US dollars. "The figure is shocking," said Kong.

Statistics show that the trade between China and the ROK grew rapidly in recent years, but the trade gap also enlarged year by year.

In 1992, China's trade deficit with the ROK was merely 220 million US dollars, but the figure topped five billion US dollars in 1997, and then hit 11.92 billion US dollars in 2000.

In 2002, the total trade volume between China and the ROK reached about 44.07 billion US dollars, eight times more than 1992. But the trade deficit in 2002 also surged to 13.07 billion US dollars.

Kong said the Chinese government was not asking for an absolutetrade balance, and China accepted it had a deficit in its total global trade in the first three months of this year.

"But with such a long-term growing trade deficit of such a huge amount, we hope the ROK side will treat it more seriously," Kong added.

Kong said during the talks on Monday, Hu and Roh agreed to build an "all-round cooperative partnership", which would have a great impact on bilateral ties in fields like politics, economics,science and technology, and education.

The two countries also agreed to push the annual bilateral trade volume to 100 billion US dollars in five years, said Kong.

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