As the most important China-US consultation and cooperation mechanism, the S&ED has succeeded in opening new avenues

The just concluded fifth round of annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue between China and the United States was successful to say the least. Among its achievements are 91 specific agreements on the strategic front. But there is more to the fifth S&ED than just the positive outcomes.

First, the dialogue was a logical follow-up of the talks between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Barack Obama at Sunnylands, California, in June where they agreed to build a new type of major power relationship between the two countries. At the just-concluded S&ED, the two countries vowed to take concrete measures to give shape to the agreement reached between the two heads of state, and emphasized the importance of expanding and deepening cooperation, and narrowing differences to ensure that bilateral relations benefit the two peoples.