Vice-premier positive about ties but urges fair FDI treatment

Senior Chinese and United States officials struck a positive note on Wednesday in discussing their bilateral trade and investment ties after each country went through leadership changes in recent weeks.

The two sides announced progress in the 23rd session of the China-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade held in Washington on Wednesday. The JCCT is a major forum to address bilateral trade and investment issues.

While the US has agreed to further relax export controls of high technology to China and address Chinese concerns over what it perceives as unfair treatment to Chinese foreign direct investment in the US, the US has been given promises by China to strengthen the enforcement of intellectual property rights laws and to discontinue the requirement that foreign companies transfer technology as a precondition for market access.

Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, who headed the Chinese delegation of ministers and vice- ministers, said the JCCT since his first attendance in September 2008 has been based on cooperation and tackling challenges together.

"It has done its best to prevent the politicization of economic and trade issues and to protect the interest of people in both countries," Wang said.

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He said China has made tangible progress in addressing US concerns on IPR protection, technology transfer, government procurement and market access, while the US has started to address Chinese concerns over Chinese FDI in the US, export controls and visa issues.

Wang, who was elevated to the seven-member Politburo standing committee in the 18th Party Congress a month ago, described the recent JCCT sessions as "effective and fruitful and have written a splendid page in the history of China-US economic and trade relations".

"The momentum of cooperation between China and the US in economic and trade areas such as investment, finance and tourism has been strong and has brought concrete benefits to people in both countries," he said.

The world's two largest economies are now each other's second largest trading partners. In 1983, when the JCCT was first launched, bilateral trade was less than $5 billion. It is now approaching $500 billion, an increase of 100 fold.

Wang described the two economies as "highly complementary" where "neither can thrive without the other".

"I am fully confident in the future of China-US economic and trade ties," he said.