The United States said yesterday it had made progress with China on a range of finance and trade issues, but acknowledged more talks were needed on the thorny issue of the value of the yuan currency.

China's foreign exchange rate regime and the yuan's de facto peg to the US dollar was an "important focus" of the two-day Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the US Treasury said in a statement following the talks in Beijing. "Moving to a more market-determined exchange rate will make an essential contribution to securing the global recovery and achieving more balanced global growth, and was an important focus of the dialogue," the Treasury said.

"We will continue to have intensive discussions with China on this in the run-up to the G20 (Group of 20) leaders summit in June."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner led the US delegation to the talks, while Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councillor Dai Bingguo led the Chinese side.

"We made progress on several key trade and investment goals at the (dialogue) and will continue to pursue them," the Treasury said.

"Reducing Chinese barriers to US exports will help the US take full advantage of the many growing opportunities represented by trade with China and create jobs for US workers."

The two sides also discussed government procurement policies in China, intellectual property rights protection and non-government interference in technology transfers, it said.