China will push changes in the next five years to cut labor-intensive exports, Xinhua news agency said Monday, quoting the nation¡¯s customs chief.

Mou Xinsheng, head of the General Administration of Customs, reinforced official pledges to gradually tilt the country¡¯s sizzling exports away from cheap, mass-manufactured goods.

China would target changing the imbalance between exporting labor-intensive products and importing high value-added equipment and energy, Xinhua quoted Mou as saying.

¡°China is still facing an imbalance in its trade structure, with a high proportion of labor-intensive products and low proportion of technology-intensive products in exports,¡± he said.

Customs would give priority to further upgrading the trade structure to export more high-tech products in the next five years as China¡¯s total trade was on track to reach US$2.3 trillion in 2010, Mou said.

The customs administration would also step up its fight against intellectual property rights infringement and smuggling cases in the next five years to create a better trade environment in China, he said.

A separate Xinhua report quoted Wang Shichun, head of the fair trade department of the Ministry of Commerce, as saying that China was involved in more trade disputes with both developed and developing countries.

Xinhua cited World Trade Organization data as showing that China was subject to more anti-dumping probes from 1995 to 2005 than other members and about one-sixth of the probes launched by WTO members involved China, including 51 in 2005.

¡°In European countries and the United States, the social problem of unemployment caused by growing imports has imposed greater pressure on political leaders,¡± Xinhua quoted Yang Danhui of top government think tank Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as saying.

(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)