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 | Thursday, April 27, 2000, updated at 16:09(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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US Commerce Secretary Visits BeijingUS Commerce Secretary William Daley is due in Beijing later April 5 as the US administration steps up its campaign to win permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) for China.Daley, who is US President Bill Clinton's point man in the fight to get the US Congress to vote for PNTR for China, will meet Chinese Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng as part of the annual bilateral Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade on Thursday. "The two leaders will discuss ways to strengthen the bilateral commerical relationship, cooperative means to assist China in its transition to a market-based economy and ways to help US businesses in their efforts to export to China," a US embassy official said. "Both sides consider this year's meeting to be the most important yet," he said. The visit will be the first of two this month by the commerce secretary and precedes a trip by a US congressional delegation which Daley will lead later in April in an effort to secure support for an expected May PNTR vote. US Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman will lead another congressional delegation as the Clinton administration seeks to open wider Chinese markets to US businesses. China signed a deal last November pledging sweeping open-market concessions in exchange for US support for its World Trade Organization (WTO) membership. Beijing made clear, however, that the deal would depend on US congressional approval for its PNTR, a status that bestows equal trade privileges on all but a handful of countries. China last year had a 69-billion-dollar trade surplus with the US, according to US statistics, but the figure is expected to fall as China lowers tariffs steeply during the first five years following its WTO accession and opens up its financial, telecom and insurance sectors. China is expected to enter the WTO this year provided a key bilateral agreement can be reached with the European Union in the coming months. The latest round of Sino-EU trade talks broke up in Beijing last week without an agreement, but both sides have insisted they are committed to hammering out a deal and new talks are expected within weeks.
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