The Chinese vice premier also offered some suggestions on how the two countries should strengthen their bilateral cooperation in these areas. First, China and the United States should build joint laboratories or research and development centers for energy and environmental protection technologies and try to put the technologies they develop into practical application. Second, they should formulate and implement fiscal, taxation, financial and trade policies to encourage innovation in and the transfer of energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies. They should also use existing multilateral and bilateral dialogue mechanisms and exchange platforms to enhance consultation, conduct joint training, promote personnel exchanges and build a database for energy and environmental information sharing.

Zhang Guoqing, a scholar at the Institute of American Studies, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes it is highly necessary for China and the United States to cooperate in energy and environmental protection. The United States is spearheading the global effort to develop clean energy and improve energy security. Cooperation between China and the United States would help the two countries enhance their energy efficiency, diversify their energy sources and protect and save natural resources, he said.

Zhou said cooperation in these fields would bring about win-win results for the two countries. With sophisticated U.S. alternative energy, clean energy and energy-saving technologies, China would import less oil from the international market. The export of these technologies also would help reduce America's trade deficit with China, he said.

Minxin Pei, a senior associate in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes technological cooperation on energy is easier than financial liberalization. Although the SED has improved high-level communications between China and the United States on economic policy, its role in resolving economic issues is still limited. Real solutions to these problems may have to involve more detailed and complicated negotiations, he said.

Pei predicts that high-level economic talks between China and the United States will continue even without a format like the SED after the end of the Bush administration. The China-U.S. economic relationship is "simply too important not to have a regular high-level dialogue," he said.

There will not likely be a big change in America's trade policy with China, should one of the two presumptive U.S. presidential candidates, Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama, win the election in November, said Ken Dewoskin, a professor emeritus specializing in China studies at the University of Michigan.

(With reporting by Wang Yanjuan in New York and Chen Wen in Annapolis, Maryland)