China vows hard line on quality, even if hurts exports

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will keep taking tough measures to improve the quality of its products, even if that means exports suffer, Vice Premier Wu Yi said ahead of high-level talks on product safety with the United States.

China has come under scrutiny for the quality of its exports in recent months due to a series of scandals and recalls of made-in-China products from toys to toothpaste.

"Obviously, tough measures are called for to protect consumer interests. We will continue to take such measures, even if this means increasing our costs and suffering a drop in exports," she wrote in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal Asia.

Wu's piece was published as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Trade Representative Susan Schwab visit Beijing for joint talks on trade in which product quality and food safety are headline issues.

Wu highlighted the steps China has taken to improve supervision over its product quality, concluding: "Our efforts are paying off."

Still, she cautioned that "making sensational charges" was unhelpful and said "it is unfair to place all the blame on the producers". She repeated a Chinese mantra that it opposes attempts to politicize these issues or use them to erect new trade barriers.

"China will live up to its responsibilities and obligations when it comes to product quality and food safety. But we would appreciate understanding, support and help from our trade partners, as we are contributing our share to resolving the problem," she wrote.

The U.S. trade deficit with China ballooned to a record $234 billion last year, and is set to surpass that this year. The single biggest category of China's growing exports to the United States is seafood, which has doubled since 2001 to nearly $1.93 billion.

Food and product safety is likely to dominate cabinet-level Sino-U.S. talks that start on Wednesday just outside Beijing.

Insisting that Washington and Beijing were working well on safety issues, Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said on Monday it was a question of improving the monitoring of imports not only from China but from the rest of the world.

"We think we are on a glide pattern which will produce a successful outcome in our relationship with the Chinese government," Leavitt told reporters in Beijing, where he is expected to sign agreements to strengthen product safety later in the day.

(Reporting by John Ruwitch, editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani)