This is definitely one that the Democrats and Republicans can both get behind. While the lead up to Copenhagen and big, hard decisions about global environmental policy are brewing, racial tensions in the U.S. smolder all over the evening news, and questions about nuclear arms throw a curveball into everything, China and the United States have finished a 2 day summit discussing, among other things, how to start a global recovery for this whole financial crisis thing.

I mean, enough economic turmoil already, right?

China’s State Councilor Dai Bingguo said the dialogues were successful, and that they talked about “everything except going to the moon.”

In the end, the two countries laid out what is somewhat of a shared vision for how to move the world out of a global recession. Not so much to say about climate change or North Korea. Well, money first.
The talks have been called an annual “Strategic and Economic Dialogue,” meaning something like the rich sitting down to figure out how things are going to go down for the rest of us for awhile. At least they are talking to each other and not starting a war, right?

They agreed to take steps to regain some kind of balance in the economy and to continue stimulus spending until recovery is secure. That is a pretty big deal- the U.S. agreeing with China that they both need to continue inventing money until the world economy recovers: One, because if they say it is going to recover then it will and Two, because if they are both going to keep making up money then nobody is going to collapse. So, we have that going for us. As well as a memorandum (when will it be a blog entry?) covering climate change, energy and the environment without any solid goals and both said they support free trade. Ok, thanks guys.

They also signed a memorandum on climate change, energy and the environment I have to give Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the award for most politician-like statement describing the agreements between the two countries:

"Laying this groundwork may not deliver a lot of concrete achievements immediately but every step on this path to create confidence and understanding is a very good investment.”

Um.

…

Um. I think INVESTMENT in the PATH to CREATING confidence by laying GROUNDWORK without concrete achievements means they all looked at each other and said Ok, let’s at least be hopeful about this, we agree on that, right? Right?

The biggest agreement to come out of the talks is that they agreed that China needs to be less reliant on exports and the U.S. needs to start saving money and making investments again. While that sounds like better news as far as economic growth for China, it also sounds about right.

And then there was all that human rights stuff that Obama was talking about in his opening statements. Again, our Secretary of State illuminated us all on the topic:

"Human rights is absolutely integral to the strategic and economic dialogue. We discussed a number of human rights issues, including the situation in Xinjiang, and we expressed our concerns,” she said.