The United States and China held a new round of strategic talks on Wednesday, part of a high-level effort to manage friction in increasingly complex relations.
State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the two-day meeting in Washington would cover bilateral issues as well as international topics including Iraq and Sudan and the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
"They will be looking at a number of issues - bilateral, security-related, economic related - in a strategic context, with the aim of exploring the responsibility that both countries share to make the international system more secure and more prosperous over the long term," he said.
"They will also look to the long term, over the horizon, to the future of US and Chinese relations and what we hope that the relationship will look like," Ereli added.
The meeting between US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo follows inaugural talks in Beijing in August.
Washington and Beijing cooperate in areas including counter-terrorism and six-party talks to try to end the North Korean nuclear crisis.
But they have often sparred over human rights, trade and currency disputes and China's military build-up. China's close ties with Sudan, Iran, Venezuela and other states at odds with the United States have added to the friction.
Ereli said the talks aimed "not to prescribe courses of action or specific moves" but to discuss shared responsibilities as "stakeholders" in the world system.
Zoellick unveiled the phrase "responsible stakeholder" in a key policy speech in September in which he urged China to assure the world it would use its growing might responsibly.
Iran, a major energy supplier to China which is locked in an impasse with United States and Europe over its suspected nuclear weapons program, would be raised as "an example of the dangers of proliferation," Ereli said.
He said Washington would explain to Beijing "how we see China playing a positive role in that area, and how China might be willing to consider how the rest of the world sees it."