WASHINGTON - The United States is building cooperative bilateral ties with China on a broad list of economic fronts, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said here Tuesday.

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China has scored remarkable economic achievements with a rise of confidence in the past decades, and is making headway in shifting its economic growth mode, Geithner said at a Tuesday meeting hosted by the US-China Business Council.

The two nations should be "very direct with each other" in solving possible tensions in one of the most important bilateral ties in the world, he said prior to the coming US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

China and the United States will hold the third round of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue on May 9-10 in Washington.