Beijing, 3 May 2012

Secretary Clinton,
Secretary Geithner,
Dear Colleagues,

The fourth round of China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogues (S&ED) now begins. Both Presidents of our two countries attach great importance to this round of dialogues. President Hu Jintao will join us and deliver an important speech, and we will also listen to a written message from President Barack Obama. Let me first of all extend, on behalf of the Chinese government, a warm welcome to all the colleagues of the US delegation.

Recently, President Hu and President Obama held a meeting in Seoul, and Vice President Xi Jinping paid a successful visit to the United States. The two sides have reaffirmed the strategic goal of building a China-US cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit, thus offering us the direction for the current round of dialogues.

Since the establishment of the S&ED mechanism, 151 outcomes have been achieved in our economic cooperation. In the past three years, under the framework of the economic dialogue, the two sides have conducted frank dialogue and close communication focusing on those overarching, long-term and strategic issues. We have deepened macroeconomic, trade and investment, fiscal and financial cooperation, worked together to meet various challenges, including the global financial crisis and the European debt crisis, and jointly pushed forward global economic governance reform. What we have done has played an important role in promoting economic growth and job creation in our two countries.

Facts have shown that this wide-ranging dialogue mechanism is pragmatic and productive. It has accommodated our respective concerns and avoided the "politicization" of economic issues to the greatest extent possible. It has fully demonstrated the mutually beneficial nature of China-US cooperation, and has vigorously upheld the common interests of the two peoples in terms of our economic relations.

The world economic situation is complex and grim. To further strengthen China-US economic cooperation against such a backdrop calls for our sincerity and action and puts to test our wisdom and courage. I hope the two sides will take the current round of dialogues as an opportunity to consider both immediate and long-term interests, further advance our cooperation in the economic, trade, investment, financial, infrastructural and other fields, step up communication and coordination under the G20 and other multilateral frameworks, translate the agreement of our two Presidents into concrete outcomes, and jointly promote the strong, sustainable and balanced growth of the economy of our two countries and the world at large.

I wish the fourth round of China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogues full success.

Thank you.