3rd China-US Strategic & Economic Dialogue to Focus Security Issue

China and the United States will launch the third Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington D.C. next week. Economic and security issues will be the two focuses in this year's dialogue. Analysts say compared with the previous sessions which mainly discuss economic issue, the security issue will be on this year's top agenda.

Our Wei Tong takes a closer look.

Kenneth Lieberthal, director of John Thornton China Center, Brookings Institute says security issue would become the key topic for the China-US strategic dialogue. The two countries will discuss the current international security situation and how to promote cooperation in the security sector.

"I do think there is a likely to be a larger role especially for the security side of the relationship. The US has, for two years now sought to increase the security dialogue and to integrate the military dialogue with the diplomatic and other dimensions of our relationship. And I think this strategic and economic dialogue for the first time will have substantial provision exactly for that."

Lieberthal has not denied the importance of the economic issue in the dialogue. He says some questions that remain controversial between the two economies will still be discussed as before.

The questions include China's market economy status, the restriction of US high-tech products' imports to China, the intellectual property rights disputes and so forth. Although the topics are the same as before, the aspects that are to be discussed are different.

"I think if you look at the substance you've seen some changes. My guess is that the currency issue will be less central and my guess is issues concern in Chinese investment in the United States will be more important than they were last year. The issue of indigenous innovation and state procurement in China came up last year but these were relatively new issues last year. I think they are now more mature issues since there have been a lot of discussion I think they may play more central role so I wouldn't regard this is a simply repeat of last year I think that would be wrong. "

Albert Keidel, a senior researcher from the Atlantic Council, hails the strategic and economic dialogue a good platform to beef up the mutual trust between China and the US.

"I think it does an enormous job in improving mutual trust because the principle to get to sit down each other and have hours and hours of talking in a frank way can promote mutual trust. So in the future, when they need to talk about an issue, they have the big reserve and similiarities. It will have a very strong and positive effect on relevant issues."

Kenneth Lieberthal says unlike the strategic dialogues between the US and Japan and Australia, which only target diplomatic and security issues, the China-US dialogue is integrated with economic issues, which forms a unique dialogue.

For CRI, I am Wei Tong.