New Sino-US ties sought (3)

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By Chen Weihua in Washington DC (China Daily) 09:19, September 22, 2013

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He believes there is great potential for China and the US to cooperate in Afghanistan, especially after next year's US troop withdrawal from the war-torn nation.

"If our two countries can work with each other and bring out our respective strengths, we can turn the issue into a new highlight in our bilateral cooperation," he said.

Wang recently sent a congratulatory letter to the second China-US joint training program for Afghan diplomats launched in Washington DC this month. The Afghan diplomats will go to China later this year for the program's second leg.

The Friday address was broadcast live on C-SPAN and won applause from the audience in the room, including former senior US government officials and China experts.

Brookings Institution senior fellow Kenneth Lieberthal said that while the distrust between the two countries is very hard to change, the initiatives taken by the two countries in recent months are the right ones.

"Military exchanges of various sorts have become more frequent and more wide-ranging. We will next year have China as a participant of the RIMPAC 2014 exercise," he said, referring to the world's largest naval exercise.

"On the economic side, we reached an agreement on the S&ED (Strategic and Economic Dialogue) to accelerate the negotiation for the Bilateral Investment Treaty and to do it on the basis of a negative list, not a positive list. That's a major step forward," Lieberthal said.

A "negative list" in this case refers to a list of exceptions, with the understanding everything else is subject to the agreement, while a "positive list" only identifies areas subject to the agreement, with the understanding nothing else is subject to the agreement.

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