French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin appeared to appease China's dissatisfaction over the pending reintroduction of import quotas on its exports to the European Union, saying Beijing was taking unilateral actions to limit its exports.
"I have the deep feeling that China is a responsible actor in the world economy," Raffarin told a group of French and Chinese enterprise heads in Shanghai on Saturday.
"During my visit, my Chinese interlocutors have been very attentive and conscientious of what is at stake ... I noticed their sense of responsibility. They are measuring the consequences that China's growth is having on the whole world."
"When the speed of growth is too rapid from one year to another, the good response is to set limitations on yourself, this is what the European Union has proposed."
Raffarin, on the final day of a three day visit here, was speaking ahead of an EU executive commission investigation to be launched next week into some Chinese textile imports.
The move will mark the start of a path that could lead to limits on China's multi-billion dollar textile export industry, which has surged since the end of a global quota system at the beginning of the year.
Investigations in the United States could also lead to renewed import quotas on Chinese textiles.
Beijing has angrily warned that its relations with the EU could suffer if Brussels goes ahead with limits, while the EU's textile trade, backed by producer countries such as France and Italy, has been lobbying hard for immediate action.
The EU should first proceed from "an objective observation of the situation, when analysing the export statistics," Raffarin said, and they should also take into account divergences between European statistics and those of China.
"Once the objective observations are made, we can look into the logical co-responsibility of all countries. This is what has been proposed by the commission and which appears to me to come from a good sensibility of our open partnership (with China)," he said.
Late Friday, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson said that a heavy-handed approach to the trade dispute was unlikely to go down well with the Chinese authorities although Beijing might be receptive to encouragement to restrain its exports voluntarily.
"I don't think (China) can be arm twisted into taking any action nor do I expect it to respond to such arm twisting," he said.
"But informal consultations, cooperation, self-restraint, voluntary measures are entirely different and are a matter for the Chinese authorities," he added.
Said French minister of foreign trade Francois Loos: "In any case, we are happy that China has already taken by itself 10 measures to better adapt itself to the situation." This included an export tax.
According to Loos, who is also in Shanghai, there are some 200,000 textile workers in France, 2.5 million in Europe, 7.5 million in the Euro-Mediterranean region and some 20 to 30 million in China.
"We have an industrial solidarity with the entire Euro-Mediterranean region in this domain," Loos said, in reference to the strong anxiety among many countries in the region over the ability of strong Chinese exports to disrupt their manufacturing sectors.