Workers check bottles of soybean oil made from imported US soybeans at a production plant in Qufu, East China's Shandong Province on July 4. Photo: VCG

Chinese and US officials and entrepreneurs held an online roundtable conference to explore opportunities in bilateral agricultural trade and cooperation, and they called for joint efforts to bring bilateral farm exchanges back to normalcy, according to a report from the Xinhua News Agency on Thursday.

The roundtable conference, jointly organized by the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) and the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA), will also organize virtual a Trade and Business Dialogue, an Agricultural Education Dialogue and a Think Tank Dialogue in the coming days.

The virtual meet-up came after China and the US, the world's two largest economies, which have been at loggerheads, finished their first face-to-face high-level dialogue in Alaska last week since the inauguration of US President Joe Biden. 

"China and US are now in the contact phase and both sides are touching on all kinds of dialogue in different industries as both are formulating new policies toward each other in the Biden administration," Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday.

On March 11, the two sides established a joint China-US working group for the semiconductor industry. Members of the group vowed to work together on information sharing and bilateral communications over trade barriers, supply-chain security and other related issues.

"It's possible that more talks will be held between the two, but any cooperation in high-technology areas may still be impossible," Gao said.

Agricultural trade has brought tangible benefits to both the Chinese and American people, Lin Songtian, president of the CPAFFC said during the meeting, expressing hopes that China and the US can make joint efforts to bring agricultural exchanges and cooperation back to the right track.

Representatives at the meeting expressed their hopes of improving bilateral ties through more cooperation in farming and agriculture.

"Agriculture is more than just about trade and business. It is the bedrock of a healthy US-China relationship," Xinhua reported, citing Bob Holden, former governor of Missouri and currently chairman and CEO of the USHCA.

"It is imperative that we support continued dialogue and collaboration in order to build a healthy US-China relationship around agriculture and beyond," Holden said.

Also present at the conference were representatives and CEOs of major agricultural firms including Wanxiang America Corp, Syngenta Group, ADM, and Deere & Co. Officials from Central China's Hubei Province and the US states of Alabama and Iowa also joined the discussion, according to Xinhua.