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Negotiation is the only way to resolve trade disputes between China and the United States, a former leading US Government official insisted yesterday.
Speaking during a visit to Beijing, former US Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor said: "The greater the two-country relations, the more problems you are going to have."

With the ending of the 40-year-old textile quota system on January 1, US apparel manufacturers, fearing that Chinese products would flood their home market and end up with severe domestic job losses, filed a dozen petitions, asking the government to introduce safeguard measures.

But their pleas were stifled by a court injunction and a federal judge has delayed a decision on whether to lift that injunction until late April at the earliest.

Kantor said he would be very careful in advising China or any other country how to handle a system which was just introduced at the beginning of this year.

"We don't have enough experience to understand the impact," he warned.

China has done much in trying to reduce the impact on other countries from the elimination of the global textile quota system, Kantor acknowledged.

The Chinese Government has voluntarily imposed a textile export tariff, in a bid to ensure that textile prices will not drop dramatically with the nation's growing export volume.

China introduced an automatic licence system on textile exports on March 1 to ensure the timely release of trade information.

And China's textile industry has also taken its own steps, including introducing a minimum export price.

But despite all of these efforts on the part of the Chinese Government and China's textile exporters, the US National Council of Textile Organizations said it will file a new set of cases once the US Commerce Department releases preliminary import data which is expected in the next few weeks.

Despite the improvement in Sino-US relations, a host of trade issues exist between the two nations, such as in agriculture and services.

Kantor said that "since China's accession into the WTO, its commitment has been modestly effective."

The country has implemented a number of laws and regulations to improve the protection of intellectual property rights.

But more effort is required, particularly at provincial level, to ensure the enforcement of these laws.

Now a partner of the major international law firm MBP Consulting Ltd LLC, which has formed a strategic partnership with Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, a famous public relations firm, Kantor said the two partners - which consider China a great potential for their future growth - would play a role in working with decision-makers and opinion-formers in China and the United States to smooth the two countries' trade relations.

As a veteran trade official, Kantor suggested the major challenges for trade negotiators are to reduce complexities, reach agreements and move bilateral trade forward.

He suggested that mutual investment will provide an effective way to improve relations.

And Chinese companies should involve more in the US and European economies, while US and Europeans firms ought to improve their knowledge of how the Chinese market works, Kantor added.