On May 16, 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council met in Ziguangge, Zhongnanhai with Thomas Donohue, President of US Chamber of Commerce. Both sides exchanged opinions on China-US economic and trade relations.

Wen said that over more than 20 years China-US economic and trade cooperation has achieved remarkable results, with the bilateral trade volume growing over 60 times. It is a result of equal, mutual beneficial, reciprocal and win-win cooperation, demonstrating the complementarities and reasonableness of China-US economic and trade relations. It not only promotes the development of the two economies but also brings about tangible benefits to the two peoples. At present it is normal to see some problems in the bilateral economic and trade cooperation, which should not be politicized. China does not pursue big trade surplus and last year among China's over US$1.15 trillion of foreign trade the surplus only accounted for 2.8%. Our market is open and we hope that the US also opens its market to China and eliminates the restrictions over export of commodities and technologies to China. The recent decision of the US to take special restrictive measures on three kinds of Chinese textiles will harm the healthy development of China-US trade. The globalization of textiles is a major progress of the global multilateral trade mechanism. As major trading powers in the world, China and the US should take a long-term perspective to jointly protect the existing achievements. Experiences show that China and the US both "gain from peaceful coexistence and lose from conflicts". Both countries should follow the five common consensuses of developing the bilateral economic and trade relations to properly address the economic and trade problems.

Donohue said that the US government and business community believe that the US-China relations are very important. The constant expansion of bilateral economic and trade cooperation benefits both the US and China. He indicated that the introduction of Premier Wen helps the US to fully understand China's opinions and concerns. He hoped the two governments further adopt positive measures in compliance with the WTO rules to overcome the current difficulties. He stressed that against the background of constantly expanding cooperative areas between the US and China the US business community expects to see greater progress of bilateral cooperation in the field of economy and trade.