The commercial ties between China and developing nations are changing as competition among them gets increasingly fiercer, a senior trade official says.

Citing textiles as an example, Vice Minister of Commerce Wei Jiangua said that if China's textile exports continued to grow 21 per cent a year with Bangladesh, Pakistan and Cambodia climbing five per cent on average, China would take over more than 80 per cent of the textile export market of developing nations by 2020.

Such an export boom for China would add pressure to the employment and progress of other developing countries and lead to more frequent trade disputes, Mr Wei said.

Commenting in Beijing, on the country's foreign trade, he said China would complement its trade policies with strengthened foreign aid, debt waiver and enlarged imports and properly handle trade disputes with developing countries.

A July report from the United Nations World Food Program showed that China's total food donations climbed 260 per cent year-on-year in 2005 and was surpassed only by the United States and European Union.

China's foreign aid was also said to have quadrupled in past decade.

``China's foreign trade volume may probably count as the world's largest, provided its export growth keeps outpacing the world average by four per cent to remain above 10 per cent in 15 years,'' Mr Wei said.

China's economy raked in US$1.42 trillion in imports and exports last year, the third largest only after the US and Germany.

This rapid trade expansion drove up China's economy but also intensified its friction with global trade partners.

To prevent frictions concentrating on certain markets, the Ministry of Commerce has urged domestic companies to diversify their export market and use technical innovation to lift the value-added to export goods.

Official data revealed that only a small portion of China's export flow to emerging markets.

The aggregated market shares held by China in Russia, Italy, Australia and Canada, for instance, was only 1.4 per cent.

Neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and India account for only one per cent.

Nearly 55 per cent of China's exports were carried out by foreign-investment companies or low-end processing companies. Mr Wei said that being big couldn't secure China's say in global trade.

As for the future, Mr Wei said that surplus, frictions and commercial ties would be the crucial issues to affect China's trade health. Bernama