By Mark Schwartz, Goldman Sachs In the 1990s, trade was the defining issue of the US-China economic relationship. Today...
Later this week, China will host finance ministers and central bank governors from the G-20 nations for the first time since 2005. In the intervening decade, its economy has continued its remarkable rise, with its GDP last year climbing well above $10 trillion — nearly five times what it was when finance ministers from the world’s largest economies last gathered as a group in Beijing.
GUANGZHOU, China — In their first top-level trade talks since President Obama hosted China’s leader in September, the United States and China said on Monday that they had made progress on sticking points, including preventing the theft of trade secrets and opening the Chinese market more broadly to American multinationals.
Seeking to warm bilateral ties and project a sunny climate for U.S. business, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed on Wednesday to cut restrictions on foreign investment, while his chief Internet regulator appeared to lay the groundwork for a basic agreement later this week on cyber warfare.
A Bilateral Investment Treaty could give China the modernizing boost it needs, and draw the world’s two largest economies closer together.
The United States and China on Wednesday committed to exchange new offers in talks for a bilateral investment treaty, or BIT, that would further entwine the world's two largest economies.
Top U.S. officials this week pressed China for greater market access to its economy, reflecting growing corporate concerns that Beijing’s promised economic overhauls will prove to be more rhetoric than reality.
WASHINGTON—U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew Tuesday warned top Chinese officials that failure to address U.S. concerns over cybersecurity and other strategic and economic affairs threatens one of the world’s most important geopolitical relationships.
BEIJING — The United States and China have begun formal talks on demands for market access for an investment treaty, officials from the two countries said on Friday, calling it a new phase in negotiations that could set the scope of an eventual deal.
The efficiency of China’s economy would likewise improve if the country reformed its financial sector, encouraging competition (and empowering Chinese consumers) by granting more private banking licenses, liberalizing interest rates on deposits, and ending preferential access to credit for state-owned firms. Those subsidies create an overabundance of cheap money that many Chinese companies depend upon. Mispriced capital impedes the evolution of China’s economy, prevents the efficient use of capital, and financially constrains some of the economy’s best performers—private companies, which are already responsible for more than 70 percent of Chinese jobs.
