Related: Major events of Sino-US textile issue

    BEIJING, Aug. 30 (Xinhuanet)-- China and the United States kicked off their fourth round of textile talks on Tuesday morning in Beijing.

    Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng led the Chinese delegation. David Spooner, special negotiator for textile at the US Trade Representative's office, continued to be head of the US side.

    Starting at 9:00 am, the consultation, a closed-door meeting, was held within the main building of the Ministry of Commerce. TheUS delegation left the ministry about 4:00 pm.

    After that, the Information office of the ministry said the consultation will continue Wednesday.

    On the ministry's website, it said during Tuesday's talks, the two sides "further exchanged views" and "clarified their points ofview."

    According to statistics from China's General Administration of Customs, China's textile exports totaled 50.36 billion US dollars in the first half of the year, of which the textile export to the United States reached 8.34 billion dollars.

    Claiming that textiles imports from China had substantially increased this year after the elimination of global quotas on Jan.1, the United States announced in May it was re-imposing quotas onseven Chinese-made textile products, including cotton trousers, cotton knitting shirts, underwear, chemical-fibered trousers, chemical-fibered knitting shirts, men's tatting shirts, and fine-carding cotton yam.

    At the same time, the US side began to make restriction-relatedinvestigations on six other products, including fibrous cloth, pullovers, woolen trousers, knitting cloth, bras and bath gowns. The final decision on whether the US will impose restrictive measures or not on the above products will come on August 31.

    On Aug. 1, another five products, including skirts, gowns, swimsuits, women's tatting shirts and socks, were also put under investigation in the US.

    China expressed displeasure for each move adopted by the US, reiterating that the acts run counter to rules of the World Trade Organization and the spirit of free trade.

    The Chinese side said though the United States knew that globalquotas would be eliminated on Jan. 1, 2005, it maintained 90 percent of the products with quotas at the last minute. "So it is unfair to blame the Chinese side for a substantial increase" of textile exports, Chinese Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai said earlier.

    To tackle the textile disputes, China and the United States held three rounds of talks on June 17, July 8, and Aug. 17, respectively, during which the two sides failed to reach any agreement.

    Sun Huaibin, spokesman for the China Textile Industry Council, told Xinhua that it is still hard to predict any outcome for this round of talks.

    Zhao Jinping, an economist with the State Council Development and Research Center, echoed Sun's views, saying that this is because there are substantial differences between the two sides.

    "The US side insists that China should levy high export taxes on the textile products while China said this violates the WTO rules of free trade," he said.

    On the other hand, even if the two sides reach an agreement, the US might take restrictive measures on other kinds of products, Zhao said.

    The European Union, another major economy that had disputes with China on textiles, reached an agreement with China in June, agreeing to stop investigations on ten categories of textile products from China.

    China and the EU also reached a consensus on the annual growth of textile exports for the ten lines of Chinese products from June11, 2005 through the end of 2007.

    However, the new limit has blocked piles of Chinese clothing which were imported before June by European wholesalers and retailers at the doorstep of the EU countries, causing an outcry from local importers.

    EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Tuesday he has distributed to the EU member states proposals to unblock the Chinese textile imports stockpiles in major European ports.

    Sun said events in Europe will influence the current China-US talks.

    "This can remind the US side that restrictive measures can hurtthe interests of its domestic importers and retailers," he said. Enditem