Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan announced Tuesday that positive results had been achieved at a one-day China-US trade meeting in Los Angeles, saying China stands ready to work with the US to further expand bilateral economic and trade ties.
"China-US economic relation is not only important for our two countries, but important for the whole world," Wang said at the end of the 19th session of the China-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), which was held at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in a Los Angeles suburb.
As the world's biggest developing and developed countries respectively, China and the United States enjoy ever closer economic ties and ever solider foundation of bilateral cooperation, said the vice premier.
"The Chinese government has always been attaching great importance to consolidating and developing China-US economic relations, and we have done a great deal of work in terms of promoting trade balance and strengthening intellectual property protection," said Wang.
The Chinese vice premier co-chaired the one-day meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab. Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming and US Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer also attended the meeting.
Wang said the meeting has secured mutually beneficial win-win results, and would go a long way to promote bilateral cooperation and create a good atmosphere for the next China-US Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED), which will be held later this year.
Like SED, the JCTT is a major cooperation mechanism between the two countries to resolve problems and disputes regarding investment and trade issues through dialogue and discussion, according to Wang.
Echoing Wang's remarks, Gutierrez described Tuesday's meeting as "a very robust session with very robust outcomes."
He said the US-China economic relationship has been the fastest growing one that his country has ever seen.
"The US is today China's No.1 export market, and China the US' No. 3 export market. The relation is growing so fast, so quickly, probably unique in history. And we manage this," said Gutierrez.
He mentioned that the two-way trade volume between the two countries had grown to 380 billion dollars last year from only 4 billion dollars when the JCCT mechanism was initially established in 1983.
During Tuesday's talks, the two sides reached consensus on a wide range of issues, including intellectual property protection, medical equipment acquisition and information security, officials said.
Ahead of this, five bilateral agreements were signed by senior officials from the two sides in areas like agricultural cooperation, food safety, trade statistics and rural information and communications technology development.
The Chinese side also announced to lift bird flu-related ban on poultry products from seven US states including New York, and conditionally resume imports of American beef, while the US side expressed its stance against trade protectionism and promised to push for the lifting of trade barriers against some Chinese products like sea food, fruit and woodcraft.
Tuesday's meeting marked the 25th anniversary of the China-US JCCT commission, a high-level government-to-government dialogue seeking to open market opportunities and resolve trade disputes between the two countries.
Wang was leading a big delegation of senior officials from the Ministry of Commerce, the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture and other ministries for the event.
(Xinhua News Agency September 17, 2008)
