US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said that China agreed to commit to a single set of standards on a range of health-care products and work more closely with the US to prevent contaminated pharmaceutical ingredients.

Under the health-care products agreement, US companies will not be submitted to redundant standards.

'That's going to save a lot of time and money' for US companies, he said at a news conference.

Mr Gutierrez underscored the importance of the agreement on active pharmaceutical ingredients for public safety in the wake of tainted Chinese drug and product recalls.

He said China agreed to make a 'stepped-up effort' to control against contamination and 'make sure these products don't get exported.'

Mr Gutierrez and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab hosted Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan at the one-day meeting at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda.

The two US officials co-chaired the talks with Mr Wang, who heads Chinese economic and trade affairs.

US Secretary of Agriculture Edward Schafer also participated in the session.

The meeting was the 19th of the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), a 25-year-old bilateral dialogue usually held in the countries' capitals.

Mr Wang called the talks a 'candid and in-depth exchange of views' that yielded 'many important agreements.'

Among them he cited China's willingness to beef up cooperation on intellectual property right (IPR) issues and lift an avian influenza ban on some US poultry products.

Mr Schafer said that China had agreed to lift immediately longstanding import bans on US poultry from six states: Connecticut, New York, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Nebraska.

The US agricultural secretary said that China had left its ban on two states.

Agricultural officials at the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the US had reported a low-pathogenic form of the bird flu virus, which is not transmittable to humans, in poultry and poultry products as a matter of transparency.

Under internationally accepted standards, that 'low-path' form of the virus does not warrant a ban on imports, and if one is imposed, it should not last more than 90 days.

The officials said that China has kept in place its ban on poultry and poultry products from Arkansas, where it is recent, and from Virginia, where it has been in place for over a year.

The two sides agreed to work jointly to address the two remaining bans.

On the thorny trade issue on the flood of Chinese counterfeit goods such as watches and designer handbags and pirated DVDs into the US, China and the US will sign two memoranda of understanding to boost copyright protection by the end of 2008, Mr Gutierrez said.

The talks coincided with plunging global financial markets as US insurance giant AIG faced collapse and after investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

The Chinese Vice-Premier stressed the importance of the trade ties between the world's largest economy and China, its second-biggest trade partner and the developing world's economic powerhouse.

'Against the backdrop of international economic and financial volatilities it is of crucial importance that China and the United States have closer interactions in our economic relations and financial trade,' Mr Wang said earlier on Tuesday. Mr Gutierrez noted that exports are 'the key driver today' of the US economy, which is battling headwinds from a credit crisis and the worst housing slump in decades.

Because China is a 'significant investor' in the US', he said Mr Wang 'was also thinking through the implications and he wants to make sure our relationship is on firm ground and firm footing because he has... a great stake in our success.'

Tuesday's talks came amid longstanding US concerns about China's currency, and its bulging trade surplus with the US, which hit a record US$256.2 billion (S$367.7 billion) in 2007, in bilateral trade that totaled US$387 billion.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other officials repeatedly have raised the issue of the yuan, which critics say is artificially low to bolster exports, and thus a factor in the loss of US jobs.

The yuan has appreciated by around 20 per cent against the dollar since China delinked it from the greenback in July 2005. -- AFP