BEIJING,  (Reuters) – The United States hopes China  can play a greater role in bringing development and jobs to  Latin America, an area where Chinese investment and trade is  small but growing fast, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.

“We very much welcome continued Chinese engagement,  investment and trade with countries of the Western Hemisphere.  I think that helps to strengthen the economies, to provide  employment for people in these countries,” said Arturo  Valenzuela, the Obama administration’s top diplomat for Latin  America.

“It certainly is not of concern, it certainly is not a  threat,” he told reporters in Beijing, when asked if Washington  was worried about any aspect of China’s relationship with Latin  America, long considered the United States’ strategic backyard.

China has close ties with both Cuba and Venezuela, neither  of which have good relations with the United States.

Valenzuela, the assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere  affairs, said he “noted” that most Chinese imports from Latin  America were of raw materials, such as copper from Chile or  soybeans from Brazil.

Yet only five percent of Chinese trade as a whole was with  the region, he added.

“If that can grow, that’s extremely valuable,” Valenzuela  said. “Our fundamental objective is to ensure prosperous,  growing economies in the Western Hemisphere and that benefits  us all.

“The challenge for the countries of Latin America is to  grow in order to be able to overcome significant inequalities,  very large pockets of poverty and things like that,” he added.

“Latin America has to grow, much more robustly if it is to  be able to overcome some of these problems, and that can be  accomplished through greater investment and through greater  trade,” Valenzuela said.

“China has even greater opportunities to focus some of its  trade on the Western Hemisphere. China’s increased its  investment significantly over the last few years, but it’s  still a very small fraction of the investment the United States  has made.”