Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi (5th R) and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (5th L) co-chair the Strategic Dialogue of the eighth round of China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogues in Beijing, capital of China, June 7, 2016. (Xinhua/Ma Zhancheng)
China and the United States have made incremental progress in accelerating bilateral investment treaty talks, addressing industrial overcapacity and expanding RMB trading in the United States at this week's annual high-level dialogue, U.S. experts said.
BIT TALKS
Senior Chinese and U.S. officials have agreed to speed up negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) during the eighth China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) that concluded Tuesday in Beijing.
"The two countries will exchange new 'negative list' offers in mid-June," Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang told a news briefing on Tuesday.
"We will try to reach a mutually beneficial and high-level agreement at an early date," he said.
A negative list outlines sectors closed to foreign investment. The last time the two sides exchanged such lists was in early September last year, days ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States.
Xi on Monday urged both countries to strengthen coordination on their macroeconomic policies and reach a reciprocal bilateral investment treaty as early as possible.
"I think this is as good as you could hope for, given how the U.S. has already expressed its view that the Chinese list is too long and needs to be cut for a BIT to become realistic," Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Xinhua.
That will "bode well" for the negotiations if China's new negative list offer is "significantly reduced" in length from the previous offer, said John Frisbie, president of the U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC).
China and the United States started to negotiate a BIT in 2008 and 24 rounds of talks were held ahead of the eighth S&ED as both countries sought to increase mutual investment.
STEEL OVERCAPACITY
The two sides held candid discussions on excess capacity in steel and other industries during the two-day dialogue, and both recognized that this is a global issue which requires collective responses.
"The United States and China support ongoing international efforts aimed at identifying effective government policies for addressing global excess capacity and structural adjustment, and achieving greater transparency on industry developments to promote market-driven responses," a joint statement released after the dialogue said, noting that the two countries will attend an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Steel Committee meeting in September to address global excess capacity.
