ASIAN economies including China cannot rely on exports to America to fuel

ASIAN economies including China cannot rely on exports to America to fuel their growth, US president Barack Obama has warned.

Speaking alongside Chinese president Hu Jintao during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum in Yokohama in Japan this weekend, Obama said: “One of the important lessons the economic crisis taught us is the limits of depending primarily on American consumers and Asian exports to drive economic growth.

“Going forward, no nation should assume that their path to prosperity is simply paved with exports to America.”

However, Hu Jintao cautioned that economic policy change would come gradually.

The US and China have been haggling over who is doing more damage to international trade.

Washington contends the yuan is undervalued, giving it an export advantage, while Beijing argues the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy is aimed at weakening the dollar to boost US exports. Hu, taking the podium shortly after Obama, said China wanted to grow domestic demand and remained committed to reforming its exchange rate “on the basis of retaining initiative, controlability and gradualness”.

“China will continue making encouraging a balanced international balance of payments an important task in ensuring macro-economic stability,” Hu said. The G20 countries, meeting in Seoul, South Korea, are trying to find ways of bringing down overly large current account surpluses and deficits among major economies to head off potentially destructive protectionism.

Hanging over the summit as well are acrimonious disputes between host Japan and both China and Russia over neighboring islands.

Hu barely smiled when he shook hands with Japanese premier Naoto Kan as he welcomed APEC leaders to a lunch ahead of the start of their summit.

Later, the Japanese government announced that Hu and Kan had met for a mere 22 minutes, the first formal chat between the two since the territorial row erupted in September. Relations between Asia’s two biggest economies have been soured by the dispute over isles in the East China Sea near potentially vast oil and gas reserves.

Public anger has been fueled by the recent leaking of video footage showing a Chinese fishing boat appearing to deliberately steer into Japanese patrol vessels, and tensions in Japan and mainland China remain high.