Top concerns for both countries

Observers here have noticed that both China and the United States are giving top priority to economic issues on their agenda.

In the joint letter to The Wall Street Journal, Clinton and Geithner said that "at the top of the list will be assuring recovery from the most serious global economic crisis in generations and assuring balanced and sustained global growth once recovery has taken hold."

The second and third priorities are "making progress on the interconnected issues of climate change, energy and the environment," and "finding complementary approaches to security and development challenges in the region and across the globe."

It is widely believed that both China and the United States share the same interest in helping the global economy achieve a quick recovery. Ever since the financial crisis erupted in the United States last year, the world economy has maintained a downward trend, seriously hurting both countries and the rest of the world as well.

Chinese experts pointed out that Beijing hopes Washington could adopt responsible policies to ensure the basic stability of the exchange rate of the US dollar and protect the safety of Chinese assets in the United States.

Chinese officials also worry that massive US stimulus spending might spark inflation that would erode the value of the dollar and China's holdings of US government debt.

Although US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had told Congress earlier that the American central bank is confident it can prevent a flare up of inflation once a recovery is firmly rooted, experts warn that both appreciation and devaluation of the dollar are closely linked with the national interests of the United States. This has been proven by US practice to the Japanese yen in the past decades.

Wide range of issues require closer cooperation

The two-day dialogue, which will cover not only bilateral matters but also regional and global topics of common concern, is widely seen as one of the latest signs of the steady growth of China-US relations despite a change of leadership in the White House in January.

Since President Obama took office, China and the United States have shown the world a strong signal by cooperating closely in tackling the global financial crisis. The two countries have also made achievements in their cooperation in the fields of economy and trade, fight against terrorism, law enforcement, science, education, culture and health.

Meanwhile, both countries have significantly expanded the scope of their bilateral cooperation to include more multilateral issues.

David Shambaugh, a China expert at George Washington University, said that the US-China relationship is "no longer merely bilateral," and it has become "more and more internationalized."

Since the start of 2009, the two countries have effectively consulted on such major international and regional matters as the Iranian nuclear issue, denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, energy security, and climate change.

These matters, including the resumption of the six-party talks on the Korean Peninsular nuclear issue, are also on the agenda of the July 27-28 dialogue.

Despite differences on certain issues, the China-US relations are expected to continue developing in the second half of this year as greater cooperation has become a consensus of both countries, observers say.

Obama has accepted Hu's invitation to visit China later this year. US analysts expect the presidential visit to help lift bilateral relations to a new height.

(Xinhua News Agency July 28, 2009)