Concrete efforts urged for trade talks

The upcoming meeting between the presidents of China and the United States in Japan has raised hopes for the two countries to narrow differences, but concrete efforts are still needed to reach a mutually beneficial deal, officials and experts said.

President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump agreed in a phone conversation on Tuesday to meet on the sidelines of the Group of 20 Summit to be held in Osaka next week.

The news, coming amid rising trade tensions between the two nations, turned the global stock market sentiment upbeat. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 353 points, or 1.4 percent, on Tuesday.