US to help smart cities

Premier Li Keqiang meets with US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker (center) and Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall in Beijing on Monday. [Photo by WU ZHIYI / CHINA DAILY]

Beijing hopes Washington can lift ban on exporting high technologies, premier tells trade delegation

United States companies are poised to benefit from more deals as China looks to build smart cities based on clean energy.

Advanced technology and management in the US has a "great market" in China as the country pushes toward urbanization, Premier Li Keqiang said on Monday during a meeting with a US commerce delegation.

By integrating US technologies with China's equipment industries, both countries can cooperate in exploring a third market, he said.

Li urged Washington to speed up talks on a bilateral investment treaty, saying China's commitment to opening-up and to World Trade Organization rules will not change and will make the market more transparent and predictable.

"We hope the US can lift the ban on exporting high technologies to China and take effective measures to facilitate Chinese investors in the US," he said.

Li made the remarks as he met US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Deputy Energy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, who arrived in Beijing on Monday with a delegation from 24 US companies.

The trip is aimed at helping US companies launch or increase their business operations in China for building smart cities based on clean energy.

During a meeting with Vice-Premier Wang Yang, Pritzker said it is very important for the US corporate leaders to hear directly from China's policymakers about their country's policies and attitudes toward US investment in China.

The companies included in the delegation were selected from more than 90 candidates, she said.

Pritzker's mission is one of several efforts underway aimed at helping to expand Sino-US cooperation on clean energy. In November, President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama announced that the two countries will work together to meet both nations' post-2020 climate targets.

As the world's largest investor in low-carbon energy, with an outlay of about $90 billion last year, China has set a goal for its carbon dioxide emissions to peak by 2030 or earlier.

It also aims to increase its non-fossil fuel share of all energy sources to about 20 percent by 2030 and will build nearly 300 pilot smart cities as part of its urbanization process.

Li Ying, a researcher at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, has said the potential market related to building smart cities could reach 4 trillion yuan ($653 billion).

Niu Jun, a professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University, said US clean energy technology will help China to build a low-carbon economy and tackle climate change.

"There are areas that the two sides cannot agree on at the moment, but they now stand closer on the issue of going green, which will also give incentives to China's sluggish imports," he said.