CHINA US Focus - Perspectives shaping the world's most important bilateral relationship

  About 200 US Marines began a six month deployment in Australia Wednesday, in the first wave of a build-up of 2,500 troops due eventually to rotate through a de facto base in Darwin, as the US deepens its military presence in the Asia-Pacific. "We see this very much as responding and reflecting the fact [...]

Premier Wen Jiabao's pledge that the government would break financial monopolies was applauded by economists, who noted the pilot scheme in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province highlighted by Wen could serve as a model. "The pilot program in Wenzhou is a big improvement for the financial sector and could ensure more small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and [...]

  TEHRAN, April 4 (Xinhua) — Iran's Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said Wednesday that the Islamic republic considers Iraq and China as the potential venues for the upcoming nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers, semi-official Mehr news agency reported. With Istanbul still being one of the options for the upcoming nuclear talks, China [...]

Heads of Southeast Asian nations on Wednesday emphasized the need to "intensify efforts" on implementing the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. "We stressed the need to intensify efforts to ensure the effective and full implementation of the DOC based on the guidelines for the implementation of the DOC," regional [...]

Consensus among leadership to let private capital play greater role A consensus has been reached among Beijing's top leadership to reduce, if not break, the State sector's banking monopoly, Premier Wen Jiabao said. This was the first time that Beijing acknowledged the monopoly of State-owned banks following last month's announcement of a pilot project to [...]

BEIJING, April 3 (Xinhua) — Experts said on Tuesday that the plight of China's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are clearly shown in the contradictory readings of the country's manufacturing sectors. The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), a preliminary readout of China's manufacturing activity, jumped to 53.1 percent in March, 2.1 percentage points higher than a [...]