China and U.S. economic and trade frictions should be handled appropriately to advance the healthy and steady development of the bilateral economic and trade ties, a senior Chinese trade official said on Wednesday.

"For the moment, the biggest challenge facing the China-U.S. economic and trade relationship is trade protectionism and the politicizing of our economic and trade issues," Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan told reporters at Embassy of China in Washington. "We hope that China and the U.S. can treat each other as partners instead of rivals."

Zhong said China is against the tendency to politicize bilateral economic and trade issues.

Under the pressure of the election year and high unemployment rate, some U.S. senators last week proposed a legislation to press China to appreciate its currency.

The bill requires the U.S. Treasury Department to identify countries with "fundamentally misaligned currencies" and asks the Commerce Department to investigate currency undervaluation as a " countervailable subsidy."

Meanwhile, 130 U.S. congressmen wrote to the government, demanding the Obama administration take actions to appreciate the RMB against the dollar.

"The RMB exchange rate is not the root cause for U.S. trade deficit with China or key to U.S. unemployment," Zhong said.

He said that the economic structures of the two countries are highly complementary. To force an appreciation in the RMB cannot resolve U.S. deficit or unemployment.

Zhong noted that given the large scale, broad scope and rapid development of the China-U.S. bilateral economic and trade cooperation, frictions and problems are inevitable.

"As long as the two sides stick to a strategic and long-term approach to our economic and trade ties and appropriately handle trade frictions through communication and consultation, we can find common grounds and shelf differences and constantly further the bilateral economic and trade relations."

(Xinhua News Agency March 25, 2010)