Mexico will increasingly look to the Asia Pacific region, especially China, for trade, in a bid to reduce its dependence on the United States, a senior official said Wednesday.

"Mexico has been very focused on the north (the United States) and needs to reorient itself," Armando Alvarez Reina, director general for Asia-Pacific affairs at the Foreign Ministry, said. "There is no doubt the U.S. will be our most important trade partner for many years to come. But it is healthy to have a diversified economy."

Mexico is economically closely linked to the United States. U.S. consumers are the largest market for Mexican manufacturing exports, and U.S. banks are the largest foreign owners of Mexican financial institutions.

But such close ties spelled disaster for Mexico in 2009, when a financial crisis that began in the United States turned into the strongest worldwide recession since the 1930s.

"Last year's financial crisis began in the United States, the great power of this time," Alvarez said. "The recovery began in Asia, which is the upcoming power."

Mexico does look towards Latin America, but significant economic similarities don't make the nations ideal trade partners, he said. Like Mexico, the largest Latin American economies including Argentina, Brazil and Chile are large exporters of raw materials.