While stressing market forces, the minister said the government will strengthen supervision on environmental protection and energy saving, and ensure high quality and security.
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As Washington and Beijing spar in a unsafe game of one-upmanship to determine who will control the strategically critical waterways of the South China Sea, some defense observers and regional analysts worry that the USA effort will prove an exercise in futility in the long term against the full weight of China’s growing military and economic prowess.
Lew also urged China to remain clear in its communications about foreign exchange policy and implementation.
He said Chinese officials reaffirmed a commitment to not engage in “competitive devaluations and not target the exchange rate for competitive purposes”.
Gregory Poling, director of Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies, said China would not risk an escalation if it knew the United States would try to deter its actions on Scarborough Shoal.
“We didn’t agree on everything”, said Kerry. China is producing so much steel – and selling it so cheaply – that other countries are getting pretty upset, claiming China is flooding the market.
In the run-up to the talks, Chinese president Xi Jinping had struck a conciliatory tone.
President Xi called on the opening day for the two sides to “manage” their differences and said in a closing meeting with Kerry and Lew that the key was “always to bear in mind that our common interests outnumber our differences”, according to Associated Press.
Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the North as a “primary money laundering concern”, a powerful sanction created to cut off the provocative regime from the worldwide banking system for defiantly pursuing nuclear and missile development.
A U.N. arbitration panel in The Hague is due to rule on a Philippine complaint against China’s claim to a “nine-dashed line” boundary around the South China Sea, a claim that Manila says undermines the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“This is not a pointed strategy calculated to do anything except keep a regular process of freedom of navigation operations underway”, he said. He claimed “we were not isolated in the past, we are not isolated now, and we will not be isolated in the future”.
Chinese negotiators will submit a revised offer delineating which sectors are off limits for foreign investment in the middle of this month, Vice Premier Wang Yang said.
Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi said “China has every right to uphold its territorial sovereignty”.
The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei all have competing claims, and are all close allies of the US. Further complicating matters are suggestions China could establish an air defense zone over part of the sea, which the USA opposes.
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Human rights: The US voiced concerns over China’s crackdown on lawyers and religious freedom, and the impact of a new law on non-governmental organisations. Secretary of State John Kerry echoed concern about the NGO law, which grants police authority to supervise the foreign groups. It bans groups that are deemed to be subverting the state.
