BEIJING, April 2 (Reuters) - China said on Thursday that it supported global efforts to tackle tax havens, but does not expect its regions of Hong Kong and Macau to be counted as such.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing hard at this week's G20 summit in London for the naming and shaming of tax havens if they fail to bow to pressure and end bank secrecy.
A communique drafted for release at the summit and obtained by Reuters said tax havens would be identified and sanctions could be deployed.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular news conference that China supported these efforts. Chinese President Hu Jintao is also at the G20 meeting.
"China is a responsible country," Qin said. "China positively supports joint international efforts to resolve the tax haven issue which exists at present.
"But we would have a different point of view if China's Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions were listed as tax havens," he added, without elaborating.
Both Hong Kong and Macau, once ruled by Britain and Portugal respectively, have secretive banking sectors, though Hong Kong has been praised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for recent moves to boost transparency.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)