China's trade surplus with the U.S. was mainly caused by factors such as differences in economic structure and industrial competitiveness, Sun Jiwen, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, said at a press briefing on Thursday.
The U.S. is China's second largest trading partner with a bilateral trade volume of 870.58 billion yuan ($126.53 billion) in the first quarter of 2017, up 21.3 percent year-on-year, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Thursday. The U.S. accounted for 14 percent of China's total trade over the period. And EU is China's biggest trading partner.
In the first quarter, China's exports to the U.S. rose 16.8 percent to 606.35 billion yuan, while imports from the U.S. grew 33.1 percent year-on-year to 264.23 billion yuan, the data showed.
China's trade surplus with the U.S. grew 6.7 percent year-on-year to 342.12 billion yuan.
At Thursday's press briefing, China Customs spokesman Huang Songping characterized the imbalance between Sino-U.S. trade as a "nominal trade surplus" because a large number of China's exports are industrial products that foreign companies transfer and produce in China.
"China is still positioned at the medium and low-end of the global industrial chain, so manufacturing exports don't bring much value. Yet generally the entire value of such goods gets calculated in custom data," Huang said, emphasizing that China does not reap as much profit as the trade surplus implied.
"Although the trade surplus is considered favorable to China, the benefits are actually shared by both China and the U.S.," Sun said.
The limit imposed by U.S. regulators on high-tech exports to China has also contributed to the imbalance, Huang added.
"China is not seeking any form of trade surplus," Sun said, noting that China would like to import more U.S. imports and hopes the U.S. can adjust its rules about Chinese exports to solve any issues related to the trade imbalance.
