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The Ministry of Commerce announced that the world's two biggest economies, China and the United States, will once again hold investment treaty talks in January. This time, it will be conducted in China.
The 11th round of investment treaty talks is a follow-up of the China-US investment discussions that took place in Washington DC last October, a ministry spokesman told reporters in a press conference in Beijing. Analysts said the next round of investment treaty talks only shows that China is bent on further boosting its bilateral investment ties with the U.S., the world's biggest economy. Chinese and American traders are anticipating more investments from each other following the talks in January.
The United States and China agreed to restart the stalled negotiations on an investment treaty in early 2013, a move welcomed by the U.S. business community. Traders consider it as a major advancement during annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue talks in Washington.
Last week, the two countries concluded the 24th China-U.S. Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) and agreed to remove some trade barriers and further promote a new model of major power ties. The JCCT was the first of its kind to be conducted since the new leaders of China and the U.S. assumed office, said Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang.
The JCCT has resulted to U.S. $500 billion of bilateral trade in 2013, up from the U.S. $4 billion that was recorded when the talks started in 1983. Bilateral investments also soared to U.S. $100 billion, way higher than the U.S. $100 million recorded in 1983. Last week's talks involved discussions of over 40 topics related to trade and investment and the Foreign Ministry of China said all of the discussions yielded positive results.
China and the U.S. also agreed to promote the mainland's cooked poultry exports to the United States and beef exports from the U.S. to China.
