Although many jaded US political observers say the S&ED has become unwieldy and excessively process-oriented, the reality is that things are changing. The operating environment of the US-China talks is shifting toward multipolarity - as proven by a slate of proposed regional trade deals and the cybersecurity debate.

US-China dialogue rests on strategic and economic tracks. The former covers vital security issues, such as Chinese military modernization, maritime disputes in Asia, US strategic pivot to Asia, bilateral military-to-military relationship, Iran's nuclear program and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. It also includes cross-Straits relations and US arms sales to Taiwan.

In cybersecurity, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's expos of the US surveillance program created a storm in both countries, as well as the rest of the world, and severely harmed US credibility. In China, many political analysts say that, after the popularity of the Barack Obama administration began to fall, it became more vocal in alleging that China had violated cybersecurity.

Now China, along with other BRICS member states and Germany, accuses the US and US-based interests of violating cybersecurity. It also accuses the NSA of having cozy relationships with the largest US-based Internet giants, from Google to Microsoft, saying they should be commercial companies rather than extensions of the government's intelligence wing.

Not surprisingly, the inaugural session of the highly anticipated US-China bilateral working group on cybersecurity preceded the S&ED meeting, enabling both sides to insulate the Strategic and Economic Dialogue from the cybersecurity flames.

In the ultimate analysis, though, cybersecurity is a global challenge and requires multipolar cooperation.

The S&ED focused on economic issues, including China's reforms, bilateral trade deficit, innovation policies and intellectual property rights, the US' quantitative easing (QE) and China's currency policy, US Treasuries held by China and global trade issues.

The Bilateral Investment Treaty talks represent a potentially promising area in China-US dialogue. A successful BIT could re-anchor the bilateral economic relationship in the 21st century, support economic reforms in China and energize US companies in the world's largest emerging market. In practice, the BIT talks appear to be secondary to broader, regional trade negotiations, whose outcomes could be inclusionary as well as exclusionary - as seen in recent trade friction between the European Union and China, for instance.