This year's Sino-US and Sino-EU textile agreements cover almost the same range of textile products, said an official with the Ministry of Commerce on its website.

Although the recent Sino-US textile agreement covers 21 categories of products, while the textile agreement reached by China and the European Union in June only covers 10 categories. In fact they are related to the same range because the US side divides one category into several, he said.

In the Sino-EU agreement, trousers belongs to one kind of products, while in the Sino-US agreement, it was divided into four kinds, namely cotton-made trousers, wool-made trousers, chemical-fiber-made trousers and plant-fiber-made trousers, he said.

The US side also divided socks and shirts into another three categories respectively, he said.

The EU trade officials have compared the two agreements, saying the difference between the two agreements in product range is quite small, he said.

China and the United States reached an agreement on the textile issue on Nov. 8 in London. According to the agreement, the United States. will set quotas on 21 categories of Chinese textile products through 2008.

In June 2005, senior trade officials from China and the European Union reached a similar agreement on their textile trade to create a stable environment for Chinese textile exports to the EU and help the EU enterprises to smoothly adjust to the incoming Chinese goods in the coming three years. The EU agreed to stop investigations on ten categories of textile products from China.

Source: Xinhua