Shanghai talks produce some positive energy

Editor's note: China and the United States held their 12th round of high-level economic and trade consultations in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday－a concrete action to implement the consensus reached between the heads of the two countries on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka in June. Zhong Sheng, a columnist for People's Daily, comments:

It is commendable that the two countries finally resumed their economic and trade consultations and achieved a deeper understanding of the major issues of common concern in the economic and trade field. The candid, efficient and constructive in-depth exchanges demonstrate that as long as the two sides are willing to manage their differences through talks on the basis of equality and mutual respect, they can create conditions for addressing each other's reasonable concerns.

After US president Richard Nixon paid an ice-breaking visit to China 47 years ago, the two countries' relations have been on an overall upward trend. There is no reason for the two countries to become estranged from each other now.

China-US trade is a natural behavior between their enterprises and people based on the supply and demand relations of the global market. Trade between the two countries was just $5 million in 1972, but that volume is now reached in just a few minutes. Even after more than a year of economic and trade frictions, Sino-US bilateral trade continues to grow, showing the world's largest and second-largest economies are highly complementary. But the cake of common interests between the two peoples still needs to be made bigger. As former US ambassador to China Roy Stapleton put it, the relationship between the US and China has developed to the point where there is no way one of them can punish the other without hurting itself.

Forty-seven years ago, Shanghai witnessed the reopening of the door of exchanges between China and the US. At a time when Sino-US economic and trade relations encountered difficulties, Shanghai once again witnessed the resumption of bilateral economic and trade consultations, sparking hope of fresh progress.

The key to Sino-US relations is that the two countries should have the courage and skill to overcome difficulties and continuously inject positive energy to guide bilateral relations to run on the right track of cooperation and mutual benefit. At the just-concluded 12th round of economic and trade consultations, the two sides discussed China's increasing purchase of agricultural products from the US based on China's domestic needs and the US' willingness to create favorable conditions for procurement. They plan to hold another round of talks in September.