China and the US have made progress in talks to reach a comprehensive agreement on textile trade at a two-day conference in San Francisco, and a new round of negotiations is expected soon.

The two sides agreed to continue consultations to find a mutually satisfactory solution after each party explained its stance, Commerce Ministry's spokesperson Chong Quan said on Thursday, adding that some substantial differences still remain.

The US Trade Representative's Chief Textile Negotiator David Spooner was quoted by Reuters as saying that the latest talks, on August 16 and 17, were productive and had gone very well.

"Both sides are eager to solve this problem but both sides also say they would rather take a little longer to get a good deal rather than easily reach a bad deal," Spooner said. "We hope to finish in one more meeting but will have more meetings if that is what it takes."

The two sides are expected to start a new round of talks in Beijing before the end of this month, when the US government is scheduled to decide whether to launch additional safeguard measures against Chinese textile and apparel products.

China's domestic textile industry is cheered by the progress of the talks, and expects a satisfactory outcome.

"We hope that a deal is reached in order to create a clear trade environment for textile traders both at home and abroad," said Cao Xinyu, vice chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce for the Import and Export of Textile.

He explained that now is the time for US importers to place orders for the winter. Chinese suppliers ink major deals with US firms at the autumn Chinese Export Commodities Fair in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, on orders for the first half of next year.

US and Chinese textile dealers suffered losses this spring when they lost a number of deals after the US government announced safeguard measures just before the April fair.

An early resolution to the dispute will also help the two countries manage the implementation of the agreement, Cao added.

"We hope the categories included in the agreement are reasonable; that (low) growth in the first several months this year is taken into account and agreement on a satisfactory growth rate is reached," he added.

The US started imposing curbs on Chinese textile products that limit growth to 7.5 percent annually after the abolition of the decade-long global quota regime on textile trade at the beginning of this year.

About 20 categories of Chinese textile products are under US safeguard curbs or investigations.

US textile producers want to retain the restrictions and add more categories to the list while importers and retailers want the curbs to be lifted and the annual growth ceiling set at around 20 percent.

(China Daily August 19, 2005)