China's annual economic meeting to benefit China-US ties - California-based think tank head

LOS ANGELES - "If China can implement the reforms recently outlined by its leadership, I believe we will enjoy a better and longer lasting bilateral relationship between the United States and China," Bob Huff, CEO of Huff Strategies LLC, told Xinhua Sunday.

Huff, a political veteran, made these remarks in an exclusive interview after China's annual Central Economic Work Conference from Wednesday to Friday in Beijing. During the meeting the Chinese leader reviewed the country's economic work in 2018, analyzed the current economic situation and arranged the economic work next year.

A former California State Senator, serving from 2008 to 2016, Huff said that periodic review of real-world results from a country's national and international policies is a healthy and important procedure, especially when China enjoyed tremendous results in the past 30 years, transforming an agrarian economy into the high-growth, second largest economy in the world.

"I applaud China looking at their economy, global conditions, and taking corrective actions to address some of the inadvertent imbalance," Huff said, "as their economy slows, it is natural and healthy to make mid-course corrections to focus its growth in ways that best benefit its people, nation and the global economy."

Huff focused on China's new policies to turn current development pressure into impetus for high-quality development, including speeding up the optimization, upgrading its economic structure, enhancing the capability of technological innovation, and deepening reform and opening-up.

He praised China's plans to encourage new and high technology businesses to drive the country's economy as well as that of California.

"Supporting high value businesses with tax breaks or less regulations will allow China's industries to spawn more innovation and more sustainable, higher productivity," Huff said, "innovation, not business as usual, is usually at the heart of higher efficiency and value."

Huff, who was the California State Senate Minority Leader and Senate Republican Leader from 2012 to 2015, said California benefits a lot from Pacific Rim trade, specifically from China since China is the state's No 1 trading partner, but the state also suffers a lot when bilateral trade got worse since California is the gateway to the United States for most Chinese goods.

According to him, among other industries, the logistics industry in California, comprised of five high-capacity ports, four transcontinental railroads, warehouses and freeways, suffered when bilateral trade deteriorated from disputes between Washington and Beijing.

"As a former State Senator still promoting California and its products, I look forward to the US and China working out their trade differences. California has a multitude of high-tech and agricultural products waiting to grace the shelves of China's markets, but so does the rest of the United States," Huff said.

"I have traveled extensively in China and look forward to eating more US beef, accompanied by southern rice and enhanced by California wine." he concluded.