US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again urged China to allow for greater market access ahead of this week’s bilateral talks between the two nations, the Wall Street Journal reported. "For trade to work in any economy, for it to produce the benefits we know it can, there must be a level playing field where domestic and international companies can compete freely," Clinton said. Separately, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner set a conciliatory tone before the Strategic and Economic Dialogue by saying that China has made progress in rebalancing its economy away from exports and towards domestic consumption. However, Geithner and the US delegation is likely to put Beijing under pressure to lift what is widely considered by Washington as China’s unfair regulatory barriers to trade.
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