Paulson terms China talks ‘very productive’

U.S.-CHINA TALKS: Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, center left, chats with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson today in Washington, D.C., as they and other delegates to the talks gather for a group portrait.  /
U.S.-CHINA TALKS: Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, center left, chats with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson today in Washington, D.C., as they and other delegates to the talks gather for a group portrait. /

WASHINGTON – Two days of what U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. described today as “very productive” talks with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi have yielded results Paulson called both “tangible” and “incremental.”
“We talk, they listen and they are moving the renminbi,” or yuan, he told a news conference today in Washington, according to Bloomberg News. “They agree with us on principle; the question is the pace of change.”
Besides Paulson and Wu, this week’s meetings involved 17 U.S. agency heads and Cabinet officials plus a delegation of 15 Chinese ministers and other representatives from 21 Chinese ministries and agencies, the Treasury Department said.

“We agreed today on a wide variety of next steps, including significant items in financial services, energy and the environment, and civil aviation,” Paulson said in his closing statement. “The dialogue will continue; our cooperative spirit will continue as well.”
Both nations also “agreed to increase market access, open the financial sector, foster energy security, protect the environment, and strengthen the rule of law,” strengthening their enforcement of intellectual property right and cracking down on counterfeit goods, the Treasury Department said in a fact sheet issued this afternoon.
On energy and the environment, they agreed to provide incentives to promote the use and development of clean coal technologies; to develop up to 15 large-scale coal mine methane capture and use projects in China over the next five years; and to work within the World Trade Organization’s Doha framework to reduce and eliminate trade barriers to environmental goods and services. “Working together, the United States and China can increase access and reduce the costs of these important environmental technologies and services,” the Treasury Department said.
On financial services, China agreed to remove its ban on the entry of new foreign securities firms in the second half of 2007; to allow such firms to expand their operations in China to include brokerage, proprietary trading and funds management; and to raise its financial market limit for qualified foreign institutional investors to $30 billion from the current $10 billion. China also agreed to allow foreign banks to offer their own credit and debit cards, effective immediately, and to open up its insurance markets by streamlining the licensing process for firms seeking to offer annuities.
On civil aviation, the United States and China agreed to expand their existing bilateral agreement to allow daily passenger flights to China to begin increasing immediately and to double by 2012, Treasury said. Both parties also agreed to lift all limits on the number of cargo flights and cargo carriers serving the two nations by 2011.
The two nations also signed a declaration of intent on tourism, agreeing to begin talks aimed at easing group travel from China to the United States.
In addition, an agreement to expand U.S. exports to China of large-scale capital goods was signed by the two nations’ Export-Import Banks.
Additional information, including Paulson’s closing statement and fact sheets on the outcome of this week’s meetings in Washington, D.C., is available at www.treas.gov/press.

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