President-elect Mauricio Funes Wednesday said he will consider establishing diplomatic relations with China when he takes office on June 1.

Funes, who heads the FMLN leftist rebel group-turned political party, said he would discuss San Salvador's links with Beijing with Taiwan's envoy as well as with Chinese officials in the Salvadoran capital.

But he insisted the "type of relation" his incoming government will establish with Taiwan and Beijing "will be dealt with later on" in his administration.

Funes said however that he is "interested in closer" trade relations with China, given its immense market of more than 1.3 billion people.

There have been no relations between El Salvador and China since its communist revolution of 1949, but there has been growing pressure from the business community on outgoing President Antonio Saca to at least consider the possibility.

Costa Rica is the only Central American nation that maintains diplomatic relations with China, rather than Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory waiting to be unified.

On Tuesday, Taiwan said it expected its diplomatic ties with El Salvador to remain unchanged despite the Funes triumph over the Taipei-friendly ARENAS conservative party in Sunday's presidential polls.

"We believe the diplomatic ties would not change," Taiwan's foreign ministry spokesman Henry Chen told AFP.

Funes overturned almost 20 years of right-wing rule Sunday when he and his ex-rebel FMLN party beat Rodrigo Avila of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).