Written by Yuhua Zhang, GEI Associate
The seventh round of US-China strategic and economic dialogue was held on June 22 to 24, 2015 in Washington,D.C.. Secretary of State John Kerry, special representative of President Barack Obama, and State Councilor Yang Jiechi, special representative of President Xi Jinping, chaired the dialogue.
Through two days’ conversation, China and US achieved over 300 outcomes for further cooperation in fields of economy, strategy and humanity, which include about 127 outcomes in strategic track.
Although it seems plentiful achievements have been reached during the dialogue, both sides were still not be able to achieve further significant development in improving trade relations and eliminating trade barriers.
During 2014, the trade volumes between US and China reached approximately 600 billion US dollars just in goods. Although both sides promised to further push negotiation during the dialogue, US-China bilateral trade agreements are still finding it difficult to make effective progress. Vice premier of State Council Wang Yang stated in his speech to US and China commercial leaders that barriers still exist between US and China. He said that both sides need to exploit new thoughts and seek a better cooperative policy environment.
In fact, there is some optimism about the overall investment environment between US and China. However, because China is always cautious about foreign capital, US finds it quite hard quite hard to mahe desired expansion into Chinese telecommunication and financial markets. In the meanwhile, US puts great emphasis on the safety risk associated with Chinese investment, which makes it difficult for some Chinese advanced industries like infrastructure to develop a US market as well.
As a result, there still exist significant trade and commerce barriers between the US and China. Each side do care about the other’s interests as well as their own, but both have scruples which still need to be resolved between the two world’s largest economic.