US and China can cooperate more to resolve a range of challenges to advance global economic recovery, said Tung Chee Hwa, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's political advisory body, on Wednesday.

Over the past few decades, the economic relationship between the United States and China has developed "from virtually nonexistent to becoming a highly interdependent and mutually beneficial" one. The United States and China are the two largest trading nations globally, and are each other's second largest trading partners, Tung said at a seminar on US- China economic relations hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank.

The two countries have different cultures and are at different stages of development, one being the largest developed nation and the other being the largest developing nation in the world. Each is of substantial economic size, and can contribute to global economic activities in different ways, said Tung, founding chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a non- profit organization.

Both countries want to establish a pattern of secure, high- quality and sustainable growth and employment for their people. Working together, the two countries can do more to contribute towards global economic recovery and financial stability, he said.

Both countries can collaborate to solve a broad set of global challenges in fields such as energy security, food sufficiency, environmental protection, climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation and the efforts to fight terrorism, said Tung, who served as the first chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

While addressing the same function, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said economic relationship has always been a "major pillar" of bilateral ties and should play an even greater role in building a new-type of bilateral relationship. Both countries should deepen their economic engagement and identify new areas of cooperation, as well as new areas of convergence of interests, including clean energy, climate change and infrastructure building.

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