By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Shanghai
The first meeting of the Obama administration’s US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue is due to get underway in Washington.
President Barack Obama is due to address the two-day meeting, to which China has sent Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councillor Dai Bingguo.
China is worried about the value of the US dollar.
China holds huge amounts of American debt – more than $800bn (£486bn) of US Treasury securities alone.
It fears President Obama’s stimulus spending will stoke inflation in the United States, eroding the value of the dollar, making the American debt China holds a lot less.
At these talks the US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s will be seeking to soothe those fears.
Ties that bind
He has already tried to reassure the Chinese their assets will be protected.
But China is not convinced.
American manufacturers complain they cannot compete fairly with their Chinese competitors.
Some accuse Beijing of deliberately devaluing its currency to make its exports seem cheaper.
China is unlikely to concede any ground on this point. GDP growth might be picking up here but the country’s exporters are still struggling.
China and the US are well aware they need each other.
Their economies are bound together tightly.
That does not mean they always agree when it comes to trade for example – far from it – but it does mean they accept the need to sort out problems in forums like this. </p
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