US-China relations are at a critical juncture and a summit between their leaders next week must produce "real action, on real issues" such as trade, climate change and North Korean nuclear proliferation, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.
"It is up to both nations to translate the high-level pledges of summits and state visits into action. Real action, on real issues," she said in a major China policy address. Clinton urged China to let its currency appreciate faster, end discrimination against foreign companies and further open its markets to US manufactured goods and farm products.
Some US analysts see Chinese President Hu Jintao's trip as the most important state visit in 30 years. The leaders of the world's two biggest economies are trying to put behind them a stormy 2010 and forge more stable ties for the coming years.
Washington and Beijing sparred last year over longstanding issues such as US arms sales to Taiwan, the status of Tibet's Dalai Lama and human rights. They also quarrelled over newer problems including deadly North Korean attacks on South Korea, South China Sea navigation rights, and rare earth minerals.
Clinton's remarks were part of a week of China policy speeches by US Cabinet officials - and a trip to Beijing by Defence Secretary Robert Gates - designed to set the tone for President Barack Obama's January 19 Washington summit with Hu.
Each Obama administration official stressed the value of the China relationship to the United States, but also drove home demands for currency appreciation and other US economic goals as well as help with global trouble spots. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Friday noted that the yuan had gained in real, inflation-adjusted terms.
"Because Chinese inflation is accelerating more rapidly than US inflation, the right measure of the pace of appreciation is now more than 10 percent a year, and that is a very substantial, material change," he said. On global problems, the United States wants China to "step up to more of its obligations," Clinton said.
"Global recession, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, piracy on the high seas - these are threats that affect us all," she said. "China should join us in confronting them." China and the United States, the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, had worked to forge the Cancun Agreement on climate change but now must implement the pact on transparency, funding, and clean energy technology, she said.
On North Korea, Washington has held out the prospect of resuming long-dormant six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia to curb Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs if Pyongyang ceases attacks that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010 and commits to denuclearization. US and Chinese companies will sign a number of business deals when Hu visits Washington, the US Chamber of Commerce said on Friday.