"The United States draws significant benefits from our commerce with China. Our consumers gain additional choices — and many American companies are operating profitably in China."

(Carlos M. Gutierrez, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, April 2006)

"China's exports to the United States run the gamut — from Barbie dolls to footwear to computers. But perhaps China's most important export to the United States is capital — or U.S. dollars to be more exact."

(Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America Capital Management, November 2005)

"If the United States does not confront Chinese mercantilism directly, China will never change, and free trade will surely be the casualty. Developing countries will emulate China's example."

(Peter Morici, former chief economist, U.S. International Trade Commission, December 2006)

"China is not a market economy. It is a centralized economy, which the government seeks to develop with the unwilling assistance of foreign companies."

(Jutta Ludwig, German business's top political lobbyist in China, May 2006)

"You can take this message back to the American people: It is unfair to make China a scapegoat for structural problems facing the U.S. economy."

(Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, March 2006)

"If the U.S. Congress were to close down trade with China, the Chinese piece would just be sourced by higher-cost producers — and that would result in the functional equivalent of a tax on the U.S. consumer."

(Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley chief economist, January 2007)

"Chinese perceptions of the United States are deeply ambivalent. They mix resentment and admiration, fear with respect, jealousy with the desire to emulate."

(Minxin Pei, China program director at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 2006)

"Let's face it. The United States can no longer go it alone in an increasingly global 21st century economy. We need a second engine for growth — and China, along with its Asian neighbors, is providing it."

(Jim Owens, CEO of Caterpillar, May 2006)

"We are in the middle of an economic revolution in Asia — the like of which the world has not seen since the rise of the United States as a great industrial power at the end of the 19th century."

(Peter Mandelson, EU Commissioner for Trade, July 2005)

"China has become the Rorschach test for American politics — everybody looks in there to find its own worst focus realized."

(Chas Freeman, chairman of Projects International, October 2006)