Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan met?with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Thursday night, hours after the G20 financial summit rounded off.
Wang said the successful meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. President Barack Obama "produced a series of important consensus" and "charted the path" for the development of China-U.S. relations.
Ahead of the summit, Hu and Obama had an hour-long meeting Wednesday afternoon, the first since Obama took office in January.
They agreed to work together to build a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive China-U.S.relationship for the 21st century and to maintain and strengthen exchanges at all levels.
The two sides also decided to establish the China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue, whose strategic track will be chaired by Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while its economic track will be chaired by Wang and Geithner, as special representatives of their respective presidents.
"China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue is a significant move to promote the bilateral relationship in a new era," Wang said.
He called for joint efforts to push for mutually-beneficial outcomes from the economic dialogue and contribute to a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive China-U.S. relationship in the 21st century.
Wang said China would like to work with the United States and other sides to step up communication and cooperation in an effort to implement the agreement reached at the London summit.
The London summit yielded a number of consensus on how to save the world out of the financial crisis, including a pledge of 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars to revive the world economy, a joint call to fight protectionism, and concrete actions to tighten banking regulations.
Geithner said the United States and China shared many views on how to respond to the financial crisis and were taking active actions. The United States would like to keep on close dialogue and cooperation with China.
Hailing the U.S.-China economic dialogue as strengthening bilateral communication and collaboration, Geithner said the United States would work with China for the soundness of the dialogue and push for positive outcomes.
(Xinhua News Agency April 3, 2009)
