BEIJING, March 19, (Agencies): China is sending a Cabinet official to Washington in a bid to defuse trade tensions, the government said Friday, as it called on US leaders to cool the “politicization and emotionalization” of a currency dispute.
A deputy commerce minister, Zhong Shan, will go to Washington on Wednesday to meet with American trade, commerce and Treasury officials and members of Congress, the Commerce Ministry said. It said they would discuss the Sino-US trade gap and trade disputes.
Beijing faces demands by some US lawmakers for President Barack Obama to have China declared a currency manipulator in a Treasury Department report due out next month. That could set the stage for possible trade sanctions.
Critics say China’s yuan is undervalued by up to 40 percent, giving its exporters an unfair advantage and swelling its trade surplus.

“A lot of problems can be properly solved so long as we can avoid politicization and emotionalization,” a Commerce Ministry official, He Ning, told reporters. “It should not be one side pressing the other side.”
He warned that dialogue with Washington might be harmed by “external disturbances” such as this week’s letter from 130 American lawmakers calling on Obama to take action.
Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday denied the yuan is undervalued and other officials have dismissed complaints that exchange-rate controls are the cause of China’s multibillion-dollar trade surplus.
Wen promised reforms but said the yuan will be kept at a “stable and balanced” level.
Analysts expect Beijing to allow the yuan to rise gradually this year but say Chinese leaders might be reluctant to act if they might be seen as giving in to US pressure.
Also Friday, China tried to put a human face on its resistance, warning that exporters might be driven out of business if the yuan rises further.
At a news conference organized by a state-authorized trade group, managers of four companies pleaded for Washington to back down.
“We are facing great pressure to survive,” said Bai Ming, deputy general manager of Zhejiang Mingfeng Car Accesories Co., which employs 950 people and exports car covers to the Americas, Europe and South Korea.

Headache
Meanwhile, the frustrations of companies in coastal China trying to hire enough workers may become a permanent headache, foreshadowing higher wages, according to a top labour economist.
Labour shortages, especially in export hubs in China’s coastal provinces, have intensified since last month’s Lunar New Year holiday, when tens of millions of migrant workers headed back from coastal factories to their home villages.
Beijing regards the bottlenecks as a temporary, regional phenomenon. But Cai Fang, head of the Institute of Population and Labour Economics with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, disagreed.
“It’s certain that the migrant worker shortage is here to stay in China,” Cai told Reuters.
Factories are finding it tough to recruit even though China’s working-age population, in the 15-64 age bracket, will not peak until 2015.
Cai said wages for China’s 150 million or so migrant workers increased 19 percent in 2008 and 16 percent in 2009, even though exporters were hit hard by the global financial crisis and more than 20 million migrants lost their jobs.
The manager of a shoe factory in the eastern city of Wenzhou said he had been unable to hire 300 workers despite adding 200-300 yuan per month to last year’s average salary of 1,500 yuan ($220).
“This year we have a lot of orders, but the problem is we don’t have enough workers,” he said. Raising prices was not an option because of competition from newly opened factories, so profits were being squeezed, the businessman added.