He was referring to the United States' huge budget and current account deficits.

China ran a bilateral trade surplus with the United States last year of $202 billion, according to the official U.S. tally, and several lawmakers in Washington are preparing legislation designed to bring two-way trade more into balance.

The initiatives include a bill by Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham that threatens to impose a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese exports to the United States if Beijing does not revalue the yuan closer to what they deem to be its market value.

China's overall trade surplus with the rest of the world more than triped last year to $102 billion.

"Chinese economists worry that, even when China has achieved basically balanced trade with the rest of the world, the United States could still run a high trade deficit with imbalanced China-U.S. trade, but the problem won't be on the Chinese side," Zhou said.

"The Chinese government has started a package of policies to expand domestic demand, lower its savings rate, open up markets, float exchange rates and expand imports to promote balanced international payments," he said.

"We reckon China may need two to three years to achieve a basic balance in international trade."

China has not allowed the yuan to rise far since revaluing it by 2.1 percent last July and cutting it loose from a decade-old dollar peg to float within managed bands. U.S. critics say an undervalued yuan gives Chinese exports an unfair price advantage.

But Zhou said the key to China's efforts to achieve better-balanced trade lay not with the yuan but with expanding domestic demand, lowering China's savings rate and opening its markets further to imports.