By Wang Wei, Liu Lina
This week's China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) was a "particularly harmonious" discussion amid the global economic crisis, a senior US financial official said Thursday.
"The American side is very satisfied with the first (round of) strategic and economic dialogue," David Dollar, US Department of Treasury's Economic and Financial Emissary in Beijing, told Xinhua. "This was a particularly harmonious discussion on the economic side."
Dollar, the previous head of the World Bank's office in China, came back to the United States for the dialogue, held in Washington from July 27 to July 28.
Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner co-chaired the "Economic Track" of the dialogue, while the "Strategic Track" was hosted by Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Both sides agreed that policies of the other side are quite appropriate "at this moment when we have a very serious recession in the world," the veteran economist said, adding that each side showed its appreciation for the big economic stimulus package the other had issued.
Dollar said one of the very important results of the economic dialogue was that the US and Chinese officials were able to go into the details of macroeconomic policies on each side.
"I think we had a very good discussion of the need to coordinate these policies as we respond to the global economic crisis," he said.
As an observer of China's economy in Beijing, Dollar said he noticed some differences of this S&ED from the previous five strategic economic dialogues between the two countries.
"The most important thing is the world has changed so much with this serious global economic crisis, so that has a very big influence on the agenda," he said.
According to Dollar, the agenda was based on the need for the United States to come out of the economic slowdown, increase savings as well as reduce the fiscal deficit. It also reflected the need of the Chinese side to increase consumption and take measures to stimulate the economy.
"So I think, because of the global crisis, the really important agenda items are how to coordinate these adjustments in next few years," he added.
The other important difference he mentioned was that US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao decided to bring together the strategic and economic issues in a single dialogue. This had created a good framework, with which both sides were satisfied.
The mechanism of the China-US S&ED was jointly launched by the two leaders during their first meeting in April in London as a way to show the elevated importance of China-US cooperation in the new global circumstances.
Although the two countries remained in disagreement in some areas during the frank exchange in the dialogue, both sides agreed that it was a very harmonious discussion "at this particular moment", Dollar said.
Under the framework of the new S&ED, Chinese officials and their US counterparts meet once a year rather than twice a year, as was the case in the previous economic strategic dialogue.
There would be a lot of follow-up discussions in the next year before the second round is held in Beijing, including discussion on keeping open trade and opening up more investment on both sides, according to Dollar.
"We will have an investment forum in next few months to go into details about some restrictions on investment on both sides and how we can ease those, and we will also have the joint committee on commerce and trade, which is focused very specifically on trade liberalization on both sides," he said.
"About one year from now, we will meet in Beijing. Hopefully, we can look back to a lot of progress, and we can also update the agenda for the next 12 months beyond that," he added.
(Xinhua News Agency July 31, 2009)
