China-US S&ED useful to move forward bilateral agenda: experts

APEC meeting

Goodman, who was White House coordinator for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) forums during US President Barack Obama's first term, said it was also significant that the United States and China are committed to strengthen economic coordination in the 2014 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting hosted by China during the two-day S&ED meetings.

"It's a great opportunity for the US and China to work together to advance the trade and investment liberalization and facilitation agenda, which is mutually beneficial and also helps the region very much," he said.

"I think China in the past has been a very excellent host of the APEC meeting," noted Goodman, adding that the 2001 APEC meeting, held in China's metropolitan of Shanghai only a few weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was a very useful and productive meeting.

"So I have high expectations for a good APEC meeting next year under the Chinese leadership," said Goodman.

S&ED

Although the S&ED is criticized by some as unwieldy and overly process-oriented, Goodman believed it's a critical part of the bilateral relationship between the world's two largest economic powers.

"Given the state of the US-China relationship, it is very important just to have dialogues even if it doesn't produce concrete results every meeting," said Goodman.

"The US-China relationship is probably the most important, because it involves many other countries," noted Scissors.

"The US-China relationship involves all the supply chain. So if the more the US and China can get along economically, the more reassured the rest of the world is," he explained.

However, Goodman believed that the S&ED could be more productive and more focused, adding that it's a good evolution to create working groups on climate change and cyber security under the dialogue this year.

"I think it's a smaller group that's more focused on the agenda, but still subjective to the overall guidance, leadership and accountability of the broad higher level dialogue. I think it's a good innovation," he said.

Goodman said those two groups highlighted the elements of collaboration and competition between the US-China relations. In terms of climate change, there is quite potential for collaboration between the two sides, while on the cyber security side, that's one of the difficult issues of bilateral relationship which requires careful management.

"I think these two groups particular are very useful for the development of the S&ED process," added Goodman.