Boosting strategic mutual trust

How to boost strategic mutual trust between Beijing and Washington was now a major concern in the China-U.S. relationship and would remain so in the near future, the Chinese foreign minister said.

As Hu noted, China and the United States, respectively as the largest developing and developed country, have increasing common interests and common responsibilities, but due to variant cultures, social systems and development levels, visible differences remain on certain issues.

The two sides should try to expand common ground, upgrade coordination, deepen strategic mutual trust and properly address their differences, Hu said, stressing that both sides would benefit from cooperation and suffer from confrontation.

Beijing and Washington, he added, should hold on tight to the main theme of dialogue and cooperation, protect their relations from negative influence by accidental and sporadic events and steer the relationship through disturbances and challenges toward a better future.

While expressing full agreement to Hu's call for stronger strategic mutual trust, Obama lauded the remarkable achievements China had made in the past decades, and emphasized that China's peaceful development benefited the whole world, including the United States.

The United States, he added, welcomed a powerful, prosperous and successful China with a bigger role in international affairs, and was willing to seek solutions to outstanding issues through dialogue and cooperate with China to deal with multilateral issues in the 21st century.

The joint communique, wherein the United States reaffirmed its commitment to the one-China principle, reflected the aspiration of both sides to improve mutual understanding and reinforce mutual trust, and outlined a package of exchange measures that would surely help shore up the strategic mutual trust between the two sides, Yang said.

Making new progress in China-U.S. trade cooperation

Yang said the China-U.S. cooperative partnership could not be built up without the strong support of mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

Since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in 1979, bilateral trade and investment cooperation has developed very fast. Currently, China is the second biggest trade partner of the United States, and vice versa.

Yang said the shock of the global financial crisis still lingered and the world economic recovery still faced twists and turns, adding the two countries should make more efforts to contribute to full recovery of the world economy and the two economies by expanding and deepening trade cooperation.

Facing this situation, Hu said during his visit that China and the United States should continue coordination on their macro-economic policies, seek and expand mutually beneficial cooperation, and send a positive and strong message to the world market.

China was ready to work with the U.S. side to carry out comprehensive economic cooperation, jointly ease trade imbalances, advocate free trade, oppose protectionism, boost the development of bilateral trade and economic ties, and push the Doha Round of global trade talks to achieve substantial results as soon as possible.

Hu urged the U.S. side to relax its restrictions on high-tech exports to China, offer an environment of fair competition to Chinese enterprises investing in the United States, and adopt active measures to recognize China's full market economy status.

Obama, for his part, expressed his appreciation toward the significant progress in bilateral economic and trade cooperation, saying a robust economic and trade relationship between the two countries benefited both peoples.

He said the U.S. side was willing to address China's important concerns in trade and economy, and make positive headway in this aspect.

The two countries agreed to establish a comprehensively and mutually beneficial economic partnership, strengthen exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and boost a strong, sustainable and balanced rise of the two economies and the world economy.

The two sides inked more than 10 agreements, memoranda of understanding and letters of intent. Companies from the two countries also yielded rich cooperative fruits, which covered trade, investment, technology, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, energy, environment, high-speed rail, and smart grids.