Govt targets 6% trade growth next year

In Beijing, representatives from both sides began the 17th round of BIT talks.

"It was agreed that the two sides will make their best efforts to reach an agreement by the end of the year on core issues and major clauses of the treaty and launch negative list negotiations next year," Zhang Yesui, China's vice-foreign minister, told the annual conference of the China US Exchange Foundation in Hong Kong.

Sean Minder, the China program manager and research associate at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, said a BIT would increase foreign direct investment between China and the US.

"The economic benefits from increased FDI would flow both ways and encourage needed structural reforms in both countries," Miner wrote in an article posted on the Peterson Institute website.

Pritzker hailed the visa agreement, noting that 1.8 million Chinese traveled to the US last year, spent $21 billion and supported more than 100,000 American jobs.

"With this change in our visa policy, up to 7.3 million Chinese visitors will travel to the US by 2021, contributing nearly $85 billion per year to our economy and supporting as many as 440,000 jobs, four times the economic and job impact of today," Pritzker told the White House Travel Bloggers Summit on Tuesday.

Pritzker and US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz announced on Monday that they will lead a business-development mission to China in April to focus on industries that support smart cities and smart growth, an effort to help strengthen and expand US-China clean-energy cooperation following the recent climate deal.

The US is China's largest trading partner and China is the second-largest trade partner for the US, trailing Canada.

According to a US-China Business Council report, US exports to China have grown faster than exports to any other major US trading partner, rising 255 percent from 2004 to 2013.

In 2013, US exports to China helped support a wide range of industries, such as transportation equipment, crop production, computers and electronics and chemicals, along with export-related jobs in US port cities, according to the report.

China was among the top three export markets for 42 US states in 2013. More US governors are leading trade missions to China these days. Late last month, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder led his fourth trade mission to China.

Amid booming bilateral trade and investment, the two countries have also struggled to resolve their differences and disputes.