Trade surplus no more a key issue

When the Sino-US Strategic Economic Dialogue was launched in 2006, the biannual talks co-chaired by the then Vice-Premier Wu Yi and US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was expected to address long-term issues.

Narrowing China's trade surplus with the US was among the core issues then. This year, however, as Paulson meets the new Vice-Premier Wang Qishan today in Annapolis, Maryland, for the dialogue, pressures from trade imbalance have considerably eased, a trend experts predict to continue in the coming months.

China's exports to the US stood at $74.31 billion in the first four months of this year, according to the latest statistics from the General Administration of Customs. The figure reflects an increase of only 6.9 percent year-on-year, down 12.4 percentage points from the previous year.

Over the same period, China's imports from the US increased 25.6 percent to hit $28.04 billion, 7.9 percentage points faster than last year.