Deepened reform will help tighten Sino-US links, Xi says

President Xi Jinping meets US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Friday.[Ma Zhancheng / xinhua]

China's deepened reform and opening-up will bring new opportunities for Sino-US economic cooperation, President Xi Jinping said on Friday.

The comprehensive reform blueprint will provide a strong driving force for China's development and will benefit the whole world, Xi said when meeting United States Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew in Beijing.

The blueprint was rolled out at the four-day meeting of the Third Plenum of the Communist Party of China's 18th Central Committee.

As the special representative of President Barack Obama, Lew is the first high-ranking US official to visit China after the Party's key meeting, which attracted global attention, ended on Tuesday.

"China will make greater effort to push forward with reform and keep its economic development sustainable and healthy," Xi said.

Duncan Innes-Ker, a senior analyst in China at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a think tank under The Economist magazine, said China is the main trading partner of most countries.

Consequently, the way in which the Chinese leadership carries out the reform plan will have a far-reaching influence on the global trade environment, he said.

Xi also said he hopes the US will improve structural adjustment and build a stable and sustainable financial system to ensure economic recovery and growth.

He suggested promoting negotiations on the Sino-US bilateral investment treaty, enhancing policy coordination and expanding common interests between the two countries.

Brendan Ahern, managing director of KraneShares, an asset management firm specializing in China-focused exchange-traded funds, described the timing of Lew's visit just after the Third Plenum as "fortuitous".

"There is a strong mutual interest by both countries in greater clarity and alignment of their economic goals," Ahern said. "China's goal of raising consumer consumption could benefit US businesses that seize the opportunity."

Ann Lee, an economics and finance professor at New York University, said she doesn't expect Lew's visit to change the dynamics between investors in both countries.

"The US economy is still weak and the country has not started any significant reforms of its own aside from Obamacare (the US healthcare plan), which has so far proven to be a disaster.

"Thus, the only real foreign direct investment coming into the US is still largely to buy cheap real estate," Lee said.

Zhang Yuwei in New York and Chen Weihua in Washington contributed to this story.

chenjia1@chinadaily.com.cn