Healthy Sino-US ties ensure world economic stability: Experts

A healthy relationship between China and the United States will benefit the consumers and companies from both sides and ensure world economic stability, said experts and business leaders on Wednesday after the 10th round of trade talks took place in Beijing.

They made the remarks after Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held the 10th round of China-US high-level economic and trade consultations in Beijing from Tuesday to Wednesday.

A Chinese team is scheduled to visit Washington next week for another round of talks, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency. Liu is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-US comprehensive economic dialogue.

With the mutual wish to put trade on strong footing, the meeting was said to be a productive one as Mnuchin wrote on his Twitter with no further details revealed.

Eager to put their economic growth on firmer ground, China and the US have been expediting their economic and trade consultations, with a goal of implementing the consensuses reached by both countries' leaders in December, said Xue Rongjiu, deputy director of the Beijing-based China Society for WTO Studies.

Based on China's recent moves to further deepen the new round of opening-up and reform, such as the approval of the Foreign Investment Law in March, and to further facilitate trade connectivity under the Belt and Road Initiative, the country will continue opening its market in a proactive, steady and orderly manner, in accordance with its own development needs, pace and timetable, to benefit both Chinese and global consumers across the world, said Tu Xinquan, a professor of international trade at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

James Collins, CEO of Corteva Agriscience, the agriculture division of US-based DowDuPont, said he hopes the two countries can come to a positive resolution, so as to benefit both countries and the rest of the world. He said the firm was "not so much affected" in the short term by China-US trade tensions.

The company will consider adding employees, research and field development resources to expand in the China market over the coming years, he said.

Gao Feng, the spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, said last month that negotiating teams from the two countries are hashing out the text of the deal, including an enforcement mechanism, on the basis of mutual respect and benefits, after the world's two biggest economies have been intensifying their consultations and aiming to break the deadlock in a timely manner.

In the ninth round of trade consultations, the negotiators discussed technology transfers, protection of intellectual property rights, nontariff measures, the service sector, agriculture, trade imbalances and enforcement mechanisms, according to earlier reports.

Trade between China and the US amounted to 815.86 billion yuan ($121.7 billion) in the first quarter of this year, a drop of 11 percent year-on-year, data from the General Administration of Customs show. In March, Sino-US trade climbed 0.1 percent to 291.35 billion yuan, according to the GAC.