Hu stressed that both countries stand to gain from a sound China-US relationship, and lose from confrontation. He said China and the US should act in the fundamental interests of the two peoples and uphold the overall interests of world peace and development. He said China and the US should rise to the challenges, remove disturbances, work to achieve shared goals and promote continuous growth of bilateral relations. He also said he wanted to stress four points. First, China and the US should increase dialogue and contact and enhance strategic mutual trust. Second, the two countries should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality, view each other's development in an objective and sensible way, respect each other's choice of development path, and pursue common development through win-win cooperation. Third, China and the US should respect each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests and properly address each other's major concerns. And fourth, China and the US should make constant efforts to expand the two countries' converging interests so that China and the US will be partners for cooperation in broader areas.

Hu pointed out there is no denying that there are some differences and sensitive issues between China and the US. Both sides should maintain the right direction in the development of relations, increase exchanges, enhance mutual trust, seek common ground while reserving differences, properly manage differences and sensitive issues and jointly promote the long-term, sound and steady development of China-US relations.

While answering questions about the foreign enterprise investment environment in China, Hu said the use of foreign investment is an important part of China's basic state policy of opening-up. Over the past decade, since its accession to the WTO, China has fully honored its commitments by abolishing all domestic laws and regulations incompatible with WTO rules and giving foreign companies equal footing of national treatment. All foreign companies registered in China are Chinese enterprises. Their innovation, production and business operations in China enjoy the same treatment as Chinese enterprises. A series of plans and related policy measures that the Chinese Government adopted to counter the international financial crisis have also provided good opportunities for the growth of all enterprises in China, foreign companies included.

Hu said China will stay firmly committed to the basic state policy of opening-up. He said China will actively and effectively use foreign investment, optimize foreign capital structure, diversify ways of foreign investment, and open up more channels and sectors so as to facilitate investment. China will continue to improve laws and regulations concerning foreign investment, strengthen IPR protection, promptly address the legitimate concerns of foreign companies and facilitate the growth of enterprises of all kinds in China by offering them a stable and transparent legal and policy environment, a consistent and open market environment as well as a standardized and efficient administrative environment.

In answering questions about what lessons can be drawn from the 2008 international financial crisis, Hu said this international financial crisis has reflected the absence of regulation in financial innovation. Its root cause lies in the serious defects of the existing financial system. Some of the main problems are: First, the international financial system has not kept up with the latest developments in economic and financial globalization and was incapable of dealing with the risks and challenges created by such a huge volume of financial activity. Second, international financial institutions failed to fully reflect the changing status of developing countries in the world economy and finance. The global representativeness of these institutions needs to be changed and enforcement capabilities of these institutions need to be further strengthened. Third, the international financial system seriously lacked the resources and means to tackle the international financial crisis and its rescue capabilities need to be built up.