Maintaining a good relationship between China and the United States is "really" important for global interests, a leading U.S. investment banker has said.
"It's really important for global GDP, it's important for the environment, it's important for the rest of the world that the two countries get along and get along well," Gary Cohn, president and chief operating officer of the U.S. investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs, told Xinhua on Wednesday.
Speaking of the eighth China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue that concluded here Tuesday, Cohn said the two sides had a very open and frank exchange of views at the dialogue, adding that this year's dialogue focused more on environmental issues such as green finance, carbon capture and electric vehicles.
"As the largest economies in the world, they (China and the United States) want to, need to and should have a very good working relationship," Cohn said.
"I don't think it matters if you're Republican or Democrat in the United States; you want to have a good relationship with China," he added.
Cohn admitted the two countries "have disagreements on certain issues," calling on them to "try and come to a compromise."
"But by the way, in our own country, we disagree on certain issues," he added.
On the global policy environment, Cohn said policies of low and negative interest rates, differences over interest rate policies among different countries and the Federal Reserve's monetary policy will bring both opportunities and concerns.
The banker said his company's global clients attach great importance to China's economy, which is being transformed from an investment-driven to a consumption-driven model.
On China's economic growth, Cohn said it is getting harder and harder to maintain a sustained growth as the economy grows bigger.
"When you're a 3-or-4-trillion-dollar economy and you wanna grow by 10 percent, you gotta create 400 billion dollars of new GDP that year; when you're 11-trillion-dollar economy and you wanna grow by 7 percent, you gotta create almost 800 billion dollars of new GDP," he said.
