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since the election of President Barack Obama, with the US side seeking
far-reaching cooperation on the global economic crisis and beyond.
Obama was set to inaugurate the two-day dialogue, part of the US
leader's push to build a broader relationship between the biggest
developed and developing economies. With China increasingly uneasy
about its massive exposure to the US economy, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made a joint
appeal to Beijing to work together to spur global growth. 'Simply
put, few global problems can be solved by the US or China alone. And
few can be solved without the US and China together,' Geithner and
Clinton wrote in an article published Monday in The Wall Street
Journal. The duo, who will lead the US side in the talks, argued
that measures by Washington and Beijing to create and save jobs helped
the world at large weather its worst economic turmoil since the Great
Depression. 'The success of the world's major economies in blunting
the force of the global recession and setting the stage for recovery
is due in substantial measure to the bold steps our two nations have
taken,' they said. 'As we move toward recovery, we must take
additional steps to lay the foundation for balanced and sustainable
growth in the years to come.' No major announcements were expected
in the Washington talks but a flurry of press briefings could shed
some light on the sometimes fraught relationship of the two
intertwined goliaths. State Councillor Dai Bingguo and Vice Premier
Wang Qishan are heading the Chinese delegation to the 'Strategic and
Economic Dialogue,' which broadens talks with China on the economy set
up under former president George W. Bush. Charles Freeman, a China
expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a
Washington think-tank, said the dialogue's main purpose was to build
confidence between Washington and Beijing. 'While the United States
and China have developed an increasingly close relationship over the
years, there still remains a fundamental sense of mutual strategic
mistrust,' Freeman said. The United States, along with close US
ally Japan, has voiced concern about Beijing's rapid military
build-up; Chinese and US ships have repeatedly confronted each other
at sea. Beijing's human rights record has also long been a sore
point, with many US lawmakers dismayed over recent ethnic violence in
China's Muslim-majority Xinjiang province that left at least 192
people dead. Clinton and Geithner made no direct reference to
China's human rights record in their article but said Washington and
Beijing 'must be frank about our differences.' China is the largest
creditor to the United States and has voiced growing concern about the
fragility of the dollar and the safety of its more than 750 billion
dollars invested in US Treasury bonds. Zhu Guangyao, assistant
finance minister, told reporters in Beijing that China would press the
United States to ensure the safety of its investments. 'As an
important investor, China is deeply concerned about the US economic
situation and hopes the US stimulus policy could make effective
progress,' Zhu said. He Zhicheng, a senior economist at the
Agricultural Bank of China, expected the two sides to talk less about
economics than about strategic issues, including Xinjiang. But He
said that the economic crisis has weakened US leverage over China.
'The US are more dependent on China than during the Bush period,' He
said. 'In the financial crisis, China was in a better position than
the US.' The dialogue is also expected to touch on global warming.
The United States and China are the world's top carbon emitters and
have been at loggerheads in the countdown to a December meeting in
Copenhagen aimed at drafting a new global climate treaty.
