China is expected to overtake Japan as the third-largest export market for the US at the end of this year or early next year, according to senior Chinese trade officials.

Canada is the biggest export market for the US while Mexico is the second largest.

China has been the fastest-growing export destination of the United States for five years in a row, with an annual growth rate of 24 percent, Chinese Vice-Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said yesterday.

The pace is three times as fast as the second-fastest-growing export market for the US.

According to Customs statistics, bilateral trade between China and the US reached $262.7 billion in 2006, increasing by over 100 times from 1979.

China's imports from the US have brought remarkable benefits to both sides, Gao said.

China has purchased 622 Boeing aircraft, which account for 60 percent of China's total civil aviation capacity.

As the biggest soybean and cotton export market for the US, China imported more than 8 million tons of soybean and 1.71 million tons of cotton from the US in 2006, making up 38 and 46 percent of the total US exports of the two products.

As for the widening trade gap between the two sides, which has raised concerns in the US in recent years, Assistant Commerce Minister Wang Chao said such issues can be addressed through joint efforts and should not become hurdles to the growth of the bilateral trade relationship.

"Organized by domestic commerce organizations, Chinese enterprises reached with their US counterparts import deals valued at $36.2 billion in May, which has played an important role in reducing the trade imbalance between the two sides," said Wang.

According to the US-China Business Council, trade with China will help the US gross domestic product go up by 0.7 percent, push prices down by 0.8 percent, help disposable income of each US household to rise by $1,000 and manufacturing productivity by 0.3 percent by 2010.

American businesses are gaining sizable returns from their investment in China, Gao noted.

By the end of July, US investors had established more than 50,000 businesses in China, with $55.4 billion in capital.

In 2006, total profits of US businesses in China stood at around $10 billion. McDonald's has 770 stores in China with average daily sales of 1.1 million hamburgers; Coca-Cola sold 1.1 billion boxes of Coke here last year.

Wang and Gao also criticized some US politicians for pushing protectionism. They said sections of the US media have been playing up the quality and safety issues of "Made in China" products, and blasted the US Congress for initiating 32 China-related trade bills.