NEW YORK - United States Vice-President Joe Biden, in an op-ed in Thursday's New York Times, said that China's rise isn't the US' demise and the US needs to "keep China's rising economic power in perspective".

The piece came after Biden's visit to China last month where he met with Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Citing his first visit to China in 1979 after the US and China established diplomatic relations, Biden said he witnessed many changes over the past 32 years during his recent trip.

In his op-ed, Biden highlighted the interdependent trade relations between the US and China, saying instead of only focusing on Chinese exports to America, US exports to China have been growing much faster than its exports to the rest of the world.

"As trade and investment bind us together, we have a stake in each other's success," he wrote, adding American companies exported more than $100 billion worth of goods and services to China last year and it supported hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US.

Job creation is a major topic in the US these days. Unemployment held steady in August at 9.1 percent. US President Barack Obama gave a nationally televised speech Thursday night on job creation and set out the details of his jobs plan for the country.

Exports to China from US congressional districts outpaced their exports to the rest of the world a trend that began in 2000 and continued in 2010, according to the US-China Business Council in Washington. In 2010, exports to China rose 32 percent faster than export growth to any of America's top-five export destinations, the Council reported last month.

But Republicans may have a different take on trade issues. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a debate on Wednesday vowed to end trade "surrender" to countries such as China.

In his last month's trip to China, Biden and Xi met with a group of business representatives from State-owned and private Chinese companies in Beijing to strengthen the business relations of the two nations. Biden stressed that the competition between the two countries is healthy and that the Obama administration welcomes Chinese direct investment in the US.

"It means jobs. It means American jobs," Biden said during that meeting, adding he was encouraged by China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) and the goal of developing a more consumer-based economy.

Biden said in his op-ed the Chinese leaders he met with know that their country must "shift from an economy driven by exports, investment and heavy industry to one driven more by consumption and services".

"As Americans save more and Chinese buy more, this transition will accelerate, opening opportunities for us," he wrote.

Jonathan Pollack, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington, said the op-ed describes how the Obama administration views China.

"Vice-President Biden's op-ed strongly reinforces the underlying directions of the administration's policy (on China and US-China relations)," Pollack told China Daily.

Commenting on Biden's op-ed, Jamie Metzl, executive vice-president of the Asia Society in New York, said China and the US are stakeholders in each other's continued growth and success.

"As the two most important countries in the world, both will need to make significant commitments to building a global system that benefits all nations in order to ensure global security, stability and prosperity," Metzl said.

"I wish every American would read this article and believe that Joe Biden is telling the truth. And I wish that every candidate for president would read it and be as honest in talking about China as Joe Biden is, and not engage in 'China bashing' for political gain," said Malcolm Riddell, editor at China Debate, an online site devoted to China issues.

Biden also welcomes China's rise and rejects the views of seeing China as a threat.

"Some may warn of America's demise, but I'm not among them," he wrote. "Some here and in the region see China's growth as a threat, entertaining visions of a cold-war-style rivalry or great-power confrontation. Some Chinese worry that our aim in the Asia-Pacific is to contain China's rise. I reject these views," he wrote.

On China's "owning" America's debt, he said "the truth is Americans own America's debt. China holds just 8 percent of outstanding Treasury securities. By comparison Americans hold nearly 70 percent."

Last month's data from the US Treasury Department shows that China, the biggest creditor to the US, purchased $5.7 billion US Treasuries in June, an increase for the third consecutive month.

China Daily

(China Daily 09/09/2011 page1)