China and the United States concluded their annual high-level dialogue and yielded a wide range of partnership initiatives on Tuesday, demonstrating their strong will for broadening cooperation and managing differences.
Senior officials from ministries including foreign affairs, trade and finance attended the eighth China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogues and seventh China-U.S. High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange on Monday and Tuesday in Beijing.
China and the United States aired differences on some issues and sought common ground on others. Macro economic policy, industrial overcapacity, a bilateral investment treaty, climate change, China-U.S. interaction in the Asia-Pacific and global issues were all on the agenda.
Both sides agreed to speed up negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty. China would grant the United States a quota of 250 billion yuan (38 billion U.S. dollars) under the country's Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor program.
The constructive discussions helped foster mutual trust and build a new type of major-country relationship agreed on by President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama in 2013.
The relationship between the world's largest developing country and largest developed country exceeds the bilateral level and bears global significance.
China and the United States contributed to the breakthroughs in negotiating the historic Paris agreement on climate change and have maintained effective communication and coordination in the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, the Iranian nuclear issue, and Syria crisis.
However, it is natural for both countries to have differences as well as common interests. As President Xi said, what is important is to refrain from taking differences as excuses for confrontation. The maturity of the bilateral relationship is mirrored in the capability of managing the differences.
China and the United States won't see eye to eye on everything, but this does not stop them from cooperating in many fields, as the annual meetings have shown. What both countries should do is to look from a strategic and long-term perspective and avoid distraction to overall relations caused by a single or temporary incident.
