'Core interests' should be focus of talks: experts
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China is also facing pressure to reduce its current-account surplus. The nation posted a trade deficit of $1.02 billion in the first three months of this year, the first quarterly deficit in seven years.
China's trade surplus will continue to decrease in 2011 and is likely to fall to $140 billion from $183.1 billion last year, according to a report from the Development Research Center, a think tank under the State Council.
The yuan's exchange rate has long been blamed as a cause of the trade deficit between the two countries and many in the US say it is in China's interests to allow the yuan's nominal exchange rate to appreciate more rapidly against the dollar.
The Chinese central bank allowed the yuan to be flexible again last June and officials said China will further increase the flexibility of the yuan's exchange rate.
However, T. J. Bond, chief economist at Merrill Lynch, Asia Pacific, said he disagreed that the yuan is massively undervalued and said the yuan might even be overvalued by July.
"Inflation in China is significantly higher than that in the US, the yuan has been appreciating more rapidly against the dollar on a real, inflation-adjusted basis, at a rate that, if sustained, would amount to more than 10 percent per year and that's pretty fast pace of real appreciation," Bond said.
Meanwhile, experts said it is unrealistic for the US to go back to the old path by boosting its exports through low-end labor-intensive manufacturing industries. Instead, the US should reduce trade imbalances between the two countries by lifting its controls on exports of high-tech products.
