Evans was speaking after hearing Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi say China had stepped up protection of copyrights, patents and trademarks over the past year, an issue that has been at the top of Evans's agenda for the past four years.

While Beijing had done much to crack down on intellectual property violations, piracy was still on the rise, Evans said, repeating his call for China to start throwing people in jail for such crimes.

"Until you take the steps of putting more of these thieves and those that are stealing and pirates in jail, you won't have the kind of deterrence that you need to prevent this increasing level of piracy and counterfeiting," Evans said.

China's textile exports are expected to surge in 2005 after the expiry of a global agreement that restricted textile trade among World Trade Organization members.

U.S. textile groups have petitioned their government to impose pre-emptive tariffs to head off what they fear will be a wave of cheap Chinese imports.

Last month China said it would impose export tariffs on 148 textile products, a move widely seen as an attempt to ease concerns in the United States and elsewhere that low-priced Chinese textiles would achieve swift dominance in world markets.

(Source: AP/Photo: Reuters)

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