Senior U.S. officials attach great importance to co-op with China

WASHINGTON, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Senior U.S. officials have hailed great changes taking place in China and vowed to keep the momentum of growing close cooperation with China when governments of the two countries began Monday the first round of strategic and economic dialogue in Washington D.C..

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan (6th L, Front), State Councilor  Dai Bingguo (5th L, Front), U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  (5th R, Front), U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (4th R,  Front) and other officials pose for a group photograph before the  opening ceremony of the China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue  (S&ED) in Washington, the United States, July 27, 2009. The China- U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), the first of its kind  between the world's biggest developing country and biggest developed  country, opened here on Monday. (Xinhua/Zhang Yan)

In their joint by-line article published on the Wall Street Journal on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said "In 1979, China was still emerging from the ruins of the Cultural Revolution and its gross domestic product stood at a mere 176 billion U.S. dollars, a fraction of the U.S. total of 2.5 trillion dollars.

"Even travel and communication between our two great nations presented a challenge: A few unreliable telephone lines and no direct flight connected us.

"Today China's GDP tops 4 trillion dollars, thousands of emails and cellphone calls cross the Pacific Ocean daily, and by next year there will be 249 direct flights per week between the U.S. and China.

"To keep up with these changes, we need to update our official ties with Beijing," the article said.