BEIJING, June 6(Xinhuanet)-- Chinese Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai said that China is working to even the trade imbalance with the United States in an interview with Nightly Business Report(NBR) distributed by Public Broadcast Service.

Last year China's foreign trade recorded 1.15 trillion US dollars, but with a surplus of only 20 billion US dollars, said Bo.

"A globally large trade surplus on the Chinese side is a kind of pressure on ourselves," Bo said.

Bo said that China used a fairly large proportion of its trade surplus is used to buy a large amount of US securities and the return rate is not very high.

China has been trying very hard to expand its imports from the US, said Bo. He quoted statistics that China's imports from the US rose from 20 billion US dollars in 2002 to 44 billion US dollars last year.

Meanwhile, US export growth rate to China was 31.9 percent last year and the average growth rate of US overall foreign trade to the rest of the world was only 12.9 percent.

Bo said that China found it difficult to purchase more US products because the US has high-tech export controls and many low-end products are no longer being produced there.

He said evaluation of bilateral economic and commercial relations should not only focus on trade in goods, but also include market occupation rate.

The ability of China to occupy the American market is merely on export trade, but the United States can also take a fairly large market share in China through investment, Bo said.

Through investment, US companies took from Chinese market a total value of 75 billion US dollars last year. American invested companies in China also made exports with a total value of more than 70 billion US dollars.

"It is the true and genuine benefit that American companies can reap from the bilateral economic and trade relations with China," said Bo. Enditem