China and the US closed the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue last week with several non-binding agreements that observers said represented modest progress on a variety of economic and trade issues, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chinese officials pledged to take actions to boost domestic consumption, such as cutting taxes and tariffs on consumer goods and increasing the dividends state-owned companies are required to pay to the government. Eswar Prasad, a China scholar at Cornell University, called the steps “modest but tangible progress” toward market-oriented reforms. The US, which has long been reluctant to export high-tech products to China for fear they might be used in military operations, agreed to accelerate its approval of “civilian high-tech exports to China for civilian end-users.” But some Chinese officials remained skeptical. “I’m still waiting,” Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said. “I hope I will have enough patience and this day of easing the export controls will not be far off.”