Chinese and US lawmakers agreed in Washington Wednesday to further consolidate and improve the regular exchange mechanism between the parliaments of the two countries.

 

During the dialogue, the eighth to date, lawmakers also exchanged views on a range of issues, such as Sino-US relations, the Taiwan issue, bilateral economic and trade ties, parliamentary exchanges, international and regional situations, and security and defense.

 

The dialogue, the result of an inter-parliamentary exchange mechanism set up between China's National People's Congress (NPC) and the US House of Representatives in 1999, was cosponsored by Jiang Enzhu, chairman of the NPC's Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman of the China-US Inter-parliamentary Exchange Group, and Donald Manzullo, chairman of the US House Small Business Committee and chairman of the US-China Inter-parliamentary Exchange Group.

 

At the request of the US, the Chinese side briefed the US side on China's Eleventh Five Year Plan, the strategy for peaceful development, and policies on energy, national defense, ethnics groups and religion.

 

The two sides hailed the momentum in the development of China-US relations in recent years, and agreed that the two countries have had close contacts and conducted fruitful cooperation at different levels and in various fields.

 

These contacts and cooperation, they said, not only conformed to the common interests of the two nations, but were also conducive to peace, stability and development in the Asia-Pacific region and the world as a whole.

 

The Chinese side stressed that the forthcoming visit to the US by President Hu Jintao was of the utmost importance in bilateral relations and played a significant role in promoting the stable and continuous development of bilateral relations. They expressed the hope that the two sides would make concerted efforts to make the visit a success.

 

The US side said the US attached great importance to the visit and was willing to make efforts to ensure its success.

 

The two sides reviewed the achievements of the parliamentary exchange mechanism, and agreed that parliamentary exchanges constituted an important part of China-US relations.

 

They also agreed that as an effective platform for enhancing mutual understanding, expanding consensus and deepening mutual trust, the mechanism should be maintained.

 

At a meeting with the Chinese delegation on Wednesday, Dennis Hastert, speaker of the US House of Representatives, said the US and China shared wide-ranging common interests, and bilateral cooperation in various fields had brought substantial benefits to the peoples of the two countries.

 

Economic and trade relations had become a bond linking the two peoples, therefore, problems and differences emerging in these relations should be solved through dialogue and consultation, he said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2006)