Yao said the US move to impose both anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese coated paper is "self-contradictory".

He made the remark over the Bush administration's decision to apply countervailing duties on coated paper imports in March and levy preliminary tariffs on imports of coated paper from China, Indonesia and South Korea at the end of last month to make up for low-priced products "dumped" in the US.

The United States considered China's to be market economy in its countervailing assessment but not in its anti-dumping evaluation, Yao said. "We will monitor the development of the case and reserve the right to take appropriate measures to respond."

Trade surplus

China is poised to take further tax measures to help narrow its trade gap, according to Yao.

"In future, we will launch a series of measures to improve import and export tax policies to balance our trade," he said when asked whether further adjustments in tax rebates were expected.

China has recently reduced and scrapped tax rebates on a range of energy-intensive products and imposed taxes of between 5 and 10 percent on exports of more than 80 types of steel products. The buzz is that the government is proposing rebate reductions on a wider range of products.