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BEIJING: Sino-US economic talks are under pressure to make progress because of the looming US presidential election, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in remarks published in Chinese state media on Tuesday.
Paulson made the comment in interview excerpts published in the China Daily on the same day that a series of meetings in the Sino-US Strategic Economic Dialogue were scheduled to kick off in Washington.
"The reason I want progress so much now is that, with the presidential election coming up, I don't want people in the United States to use the lack of progress as a reason for saying, 'Dialogue doesn't work, we need tougher legislation or we need to make China an issue in the election'," Paulson said.
"We have to keep making progress because we need some sign posts to show that we are not just talking the talk but walking the walk," he said in the report.
The two-day dialogue, the second of its kind, will bring together a team headed by Paulson, and one headed by Wu Yi, a Chinese vice premier and foreign trade specialist.
It is aimed at discussing medium- to long-term concerns of the two powers but the focus of the meeting is turning out to be China's currency, which American critics say is undervalued and responsible for a widening trade gap.
If the US election, scheduled for November 2008, repeats the patterns of recent polls, China is likely to creep up as a prominent agenda item.
- AFP/so
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