China's efforts to cool surging lending are not likely to significantly slow its exports in the latter half of this year, a top commerce official said Thursday.

"We hope for (basic) trade balance, with a slight surplus," Vice Commerce Minister Liao Xiaoqi told reporters when asked for a forecast for China's trade surplus this year.

Some economists have said that official measures to cool the country's heated economic growth, including hikes in the reserve requirement ratio and the benchmark one-year lending rate, could hurt domestic demand and imports, thus widening China's trade surplus.

China's trade surplus hit a record monthly high of US$13 billion in May. In 2005, it more than tripled to a record US$102 billion.

Liao also said China is still negotiating with the European Union and the U.S. over its import tariffs on foreign-made auto parts.

The U.S. contends China's import tariffs are designed to discourage automakers in China from using imported parts and are at odds with market-opening commitments made by China when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.