US, China launching strategic dialogue in Beijing
(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-08-01 14:42

Mr. Zoellick, who attended a regional security conference in Vientiane, Laos, last week, said in weekend a stopover in Hong Kong that he would discuss foreign policy and economics with senior Chinese officials during his Beijing visit.

"I hope we'll enable the U.S. and China to get a better sense of where there are points of mutuality, which I believe to be many, to work co-operatively, and also where we have differences how best to manage them," the Associated Press quoted him as saying then.

Speaking to reporters in Hong Kong Saturday, Mr. Zoellick said he would try to focus during the dialogue on the bigger picture of the relationship.

"We'll try to step back from the individual items on the agenda and see how we can integrate the topics," according to a transcript of his comments on a State Department information Web site, usinfo.state.gov.

Concerning economic cooperation, Mr. Zoellick is expected to confer with senior officials of China's National Development and Reform Commission, a super-ministry in charge of coordinating economic policy and guiding investment and energy policy, Reuters reported.

Earlier this month, China helped ease frictions between the two powers by decoupling its currency, the yuan, from the U.S. dollar.

The Bush administration had been pressing Beijing to revalue the yuan, formerly pegged at about 8.28 to the dollar, arguing that the peg system was giving Chinese exporters huge trade advantages.

China now sets the yuan's value in reference to a basket of major world currencies, and it is now worth about 8.1 to the dollar.

The Associated Press quoted some news reports as saying that China’s central bank had briefed American officials in advance of its plan to drop yuan's link to the dollar two weeks ago, which was believed as an indication of an attempt by Beijing to solicit support from Washington.

U.S. legislators have been worried about a bid by CNOOC for California-based Unocal Corp, which they claim presents risks to American security.

Meanwhile, a growing list of American giant corporations have acquired major assets in China. In June, the Bank of America (BoA) bought a 9 per cent stake of the China’s Construction Bank, with a bill of US$3 billion, making the US bank the largest single foreign investor in China's banking sector so far.

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