US may ditch twice-yearly talks China (US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue)

Telegraph ^ | 01/26/09 | James Quinn and Malcolm Moore

[TigerLikesRooster]

US may ditch twice-yearly talks China

Strained relations between the US and China are likely to increase in the coming months as a number of senior officials in President Barack Obama's administration are believed to be keen to axe bi-annual economic meetings between the two superpowers.

By James Quinn in New York and Malcolm Moore in Shanghai

Last Updated: 6:03AM GMT 26 Jan 2009

The meetings – known as the US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) – are unlikely to continue in their current form under the Obama administration, which is understood to favour more proactive and honest communication, rather than what it perceives to be twice-yearly "talking shops".

In their place, President Obama's team, including US Treasury Secretary-designate Tim Geithner, are thought to prefer more proactive, less staged dialogue which will lead to actual agreements on economic policies. One criticism of the meetings, the most recent of which was in Beijing in December, was that though bold in aspirations, they achieved little.

Mr Geithner, however, who served as under-secretary of the Treasury for international affairs in the Clinton administration, is more than aware of the need to keep talking to China.

[TigerLikesRooster]

I won't miss its demise. Possibly another sign of dying Chimerica.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[DoughtyOne]

IMO, this talk of a strained relations is nonsensical. If anything Obama will be talking to them more often. It even intimates this in the article.

Both parties seems to be enamored with China.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Yes, it is strained. Their proactive talk will be more about complaining session. It will turn adversarial, just like U.S.-Soviet talks over hotline. I can picture both U.S. raising the specter of "Mutually Assured Destruction" by U.S. economic collapse. China will shoot back with China's political collapse and massive riots. Then Odacity will talk about riots in big cities of U.S. Must be real entertaining session.

[DoughtyOne]

And a good time will be had by all.

Going down? ;-)

[Gumdrop]

Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy.............yada, yada, yada!

Isn’t that the Democratic, Hilary Clinton mantra????

What happened? It only took 5 days for everything to become unraveled. What a bunch of losers and incompetents. Yet, they yelled and screamed for 8 years under Bush-Cheney.

[quintr]

...keen to axe bi-annual economic meetings ...

twice yearly - semiannual

every other year = bi-annual

Headline doesn’t match text verbiage

??

[Teacher317]

Don’t expect journalism majors to have a decent command of the English language

[MimirsWell]

I am going to echo your opinion on this one. Although, for America to succeed, they will need to change how the Chinese culturally perceive these lavish useless dialogues. I managed Sales for a large multinational in China and the pre-sales cycles are exceptionally long during which time we did nothing but “talk and drink and eat in lavish luncheons”. Nothing regarding work ever got discussed in such meetings but in the end, results were forthcoming. I learnt this after spending months with no results when I went over just to discuss work and the relationship was causative to business instead of the other way around. It never worked with the Chinese. Whereas China isn’t exactly a client of the US, I wonder if they’ll learn to adopt the western way in geo-political negotiations.