Both officials in their telephone conversation late Monday also emphasized the need to maintain close consultations "during this difficult period for the global economy," a US Treasury statement said.

The statement did not explicitly say whether the twice-yearly US-China "Strategic Economic Dialogue" held under President George W. Bush's administration would be continued.

The two officials "agreed on the need for a continued high-level dialogue on bilateral economic issues," the statement said.

The Strategic Economic Dialogue was initiated two years ago by Geithner's predecessor Henry Paulson and is now the highest-level regular forum for discussion of economic issues between the two nations.

China wants the mechanism to remain under President Barack Obama's administration, which seems more interested in a comprehensive dialogue covering possibly perennial US concerns such as human rights, Chinese military expansion, Tibet, and Taiwan, which Bejing considers a renegade province.

"We need a comprehensive dialogue with China," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week, pointing out that the Bush administration focused too much on economic issues.

"The strategic dialogue that was begun in the Bush administration turned into an economic dialogue, and that is a very important aspect of our relationship but it is not the only aspect," said the chief US diplomat.

Clinton vowed to work with the White House as well as the Treasury Department and other agencies to design "a more comprehensive approach" in line with China's "important" regional and international role on key issues.

Obama and China's President Hu Jintao agreed to forge "more positive" ties in their first telephone call on Friday since the US leader came to power on January 20.

Geithner and Wang, in their telephone talks, discussed global economic challenges, the important role that China and the United States played in addressing these challenges, and the US-China economic relationship, the Treasury statement said.

It was not known whether the talks also touched on the prickly issue of the Chinese yuan currency.

Giethner recently accused China of manipulating its currency for trade gains, a charge quickly denied by Beijing.

"President Obama -- backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists -- believes that China is manipulating its currency," Geithner said in written testimony to senators before he was confirmed.

Obama has pledged to "use aggressively all the diplomatic avenues open to him to seek change in China's currency practices," Geithner said.

Under the Bush administration, the Treasury had stopped short of identifying China a currency manipulator in its semiannual global currency reviews, acknowledging however that the yuan was relatively undervalued against the US dollar.

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