China, US investment talks called top priority

It said that key sectors in which foreign ownership restrictions need to be reduced include agriculture and food, vehicles, financial services, cloud computing, data centers, health insurance and hospitals, energy exploration and development, refining and petrochemicals, audiovisual and other media industries, and energy-intensive industries.

"The pace of negotiations for the China-US investment pact should be accelerated. Promoting two-way investment is now the key issue in enhancing Sino-US economic ties", said Ge Shunqi, deputy head of the Institute of International Economics at Nankai University in Tianjin.

He said the key issue is the "negative list", and the progress of negotiations will be decided partly by the country's determination to really open up various domestic sectors.

He said China should emphasize cross-border mergers and acquisitions, dramatically open the service sector to sustain inward investment and update policies covering foreign direct investment.

China's new leaders unveiled the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone in August, adopting the "negative list" system for the first time. The use of that system has been seen as a preliminary move in negotiations for investment pacts with the US and the European Union.

Sino-US bilateral investment is a mere fraction of the scale of two-way trade.

In 2013, US non-financial investment in China was $3.35 billion, accounting for about 2.85 percent of China's total.

China's outward direct investment in the US hit $4.23 billion last year, or 4.69 percent of China's overall non-financial ODI, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Bilateral merchandise trade in 2013 stood at $521 billion, about 12.5 percent of China's total trade.

Frisbie said that the new US ambassador to China - Max Baucus - is well-placed to stress the need to open up to more investment.