US, EU to ask China to play by the rules

The United States and the European Union joined forces Friday in a bid to "convince" China that it would be in its best interest to abide by the rules of international trade.
The China "challenge" was the main focus of the first meeting Friday of the Transatlantic Economic Council created at the US-EU summit in April, said European Commission Vice President Gunter Verheugen, who co-chaired the meeting with US President George W. Bush's economic advisor Allan Hubbard.
The debate, Verheugen told reporters, focused on "how does it affect our economies, how does it affect our consumers. How do we react if and when we recognize that China does not fully respect the rules, to put it very mildly."
"Would a joint effort to convince China that it is in China's interest to fully respect the rules be more useful than individual approaches which we have used? That is the kind of question that we have discussed," the EU official added.