It has been 40 years since China and the United States established formal diplomatic relations. At the time, there was no precedent for two countries with distinctly different political systems and cultural traditions to coexist peacefully and achieve common progress. China-U.S. relations have always been accompanied by uncertainty, and it takes time, patience, perseverance, and confidence to eliminate the uncertainty. It also requires the two countries to strengthen the foundations for their cooperative partnership by promoting economic and trade cooperation and other means.

It was clearly noted in the Shanghai Communiqué published in 1972 that both sides should view bilateral trade as an area from which mutual benefit can be derived. The two countries have conducted fruitful trade cooperation over the past 40 years. Their bilateral trade volume had soared from merely 100 million U.S. dollars in 1972 to over 400 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, and is likely to exceed 500 billion U.S. dollars this year. Furthermore, along with the rapid development of China's economy, China-U.S. economic and trade relations have become more balanced, with two-way investment playing a growing role in their trade cooperation. At present, the two economies are highly interdependent.

China-U.S. relations have advanced through a rough and rugged course over the past 40 years, with their economic ties serving as a "propeller" and "ballast." In order to eliminate uncertainty and ensure the stable development of their bilateral relations, the two countries should continue to promote economic and trade cooperation, and enhance the role of such cooperation.

Economic and trade relations, the "ballast" and "propeller" for China-U.S. relations, need to be carefully maintained as well. In recent years, bilateral economic and trade frictions are not infrequent. Occurrence of such frictions is but normal since the economic and trade relations between the two countries are so large in size and highly complex.

However, the uncertainties in the economic and trade relations have started to cause some interference to the healthy development of China-U.S. relations. To reduce or eliminate such uncertainties and consolidate the strategic foundation of the economic and trade relations between China and the United State, some sort of normative and mechanistic arrangement need to be implemented, among other things. Through such norms and mechanisms, the frictions and problems in China-U.S. economic and trade relations can be resolved and the direction of the relations will become more clear and definite.

After 40 years of grinding in, a regulative processing framework gradually takes shape in China-U.S. economic and trade relations. In the process of dealing with trade frictions or disputes, the two sides have established a series of bilateral coordination mechanisms, or alternatively, can maintain their own interests through the WTO rules.

On the other hand, in-depth development of economic and trade cooperation has touched deep interests of each of the parties, so that they need to constantly make adjustments to form a set of mutually acceptable rules.

China is stepping up economic structural adjustment efforts, and striving to increase domestic demand. In order to solve the problem of trade imbalance, the United States need to increase their own economic structure adjustment, cancel the high-tech export restrictions to China, and change the Pan-Political tendency in the investment review. Only through deep interaction, can the "gears" of bilateral economic and trade cooperation mechanism better grind in and run more smoothly.

It is of great significance for China and the United States to establish mature and effective economic and trade norms. Normative relations can not only effectively prevent politicization of economic and trade issues, jointly safeguard the basic pattern of cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win, but also help promote the development of relationship in other areas so that China-U.S. relations can be more certain in the overall.