China Wednesday called on the United States to make joint
efforts to improve the economic imbalance of both countries.
"China and the U.S are complementary as China has an excessively
high trade surplus, a high savings rate and insufficient domestic
demand, while the U.S. has an excessively high trade deficit and
unduly low savings rate, so both sides have to effectively adjust
their polices to resolve the imbalance," said Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank
of China (PBOC), China's central bank.
Zhou made the remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of
the Third China-U.S. Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) held in
Beijing. The two-day event began on Wednesday.
Zhou said China decides to take a package of policies to rectify
the imbalance, including boosting domestic demand, especially
demand of consumption and the rural population, and expanding the
growth of the service sector.
Zhou said China will correct the policies of "encouraging
exports and limiting imports" in trade and "loose on inflow and
strict on the outflow of foreign exchange", and deepen the reform
of the pension system, medical care system and educational fees, in
a bid to reduce concerns of the consumers and expand
consumption.
He noted that China stresses the importance of the role of the
price lever, saying China has started the reform of exchange rate
mechanism and continuously expanded the flexibility of the floating
of exchange rate.
Zhou said China also attaches importance to the adjustment of
the U.S. economy, saying China hoped that the U.S. can overcome the
subprime loan crisis and that the U.S. consumers raise saving rate
and reduce consumption to promote the balance of economy.
Zhou at the same time warned against over adjustment, saying
over adjustment is not a good phenomenon.
(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2007)
