Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, kicking off talks with China’s economic leaders, said the meeting must yield results to damp “anti-China” sentiment. Vice Premier Wu Yi, his counterpart, warned Americans not to blame China for a record trade deficit.

“It is up to us, over these two days and the work that follows, to show that words are precursors to action,” Mr. Paulson said in his opening remarks in Washington. Mr. Wu responded that “politicizing” trade issues is “absolutely unacceptable.”

Mr. Paulson convened the second meeting of the so-called Strategic Economic Dialogue under pressure from American lawmakers to convince China to take steps to reduce a record trade gap between the two countries. American legislators this year have introduced at least half a dozen measures aimed at China.

“There is growing skepticism in each country about the others’s intentions,” Mr. Paulson said. “Unfortunately, in America this is manifesting itself as anti-China sentiment as China becomes a symbol of the real and imagined downside of global competition.”

Mr. Wu, 68, said “the two countries should look domestically to seek ways to resolve their economic problems and help each other to address respective issues through cooperation, instead of blaming each other for their own domestic economic problems.”

The delegations include 10 Bush administration cabinet-rank officials and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, with 17 Chinese ministers, regulators, and other policy makers. The dialogue spans initiatives from removing limits on aviation links and protecting intellectual property rights, to cooperating on energy and environmental issues.

Alongside the talks, a delegation of Chinese companies has signed more than $20 billion of trade deals so far this month, Vice Trade Minister Ma Xiuhong told reporters in Washington yesterday. Six Chinese manufacturing groups representing 208 companies are visiting 25 American cities on a tour that ends May 25, she said.

The chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, Liu Mingkang, said one of the topics in the two-day talks will be negotiations over China’s 25% limit on foreign ownership of its banks. He declined to comment on whether China would agree to loosening the restriction, telling reporters before yesterday’s session that it would depend on the talks.

“We had hoped to hear last night and we didn’t, which means this is still being negotiated,” the chief legislative counsel for the American Bankers Association, Carter McDowell, said in an interview in Washington yesterday. He said the Washington-based lobbying group asked the Treasury to push for 100% foreign ownership, with 51% being the key minimum target.

Mr. Paulson, 61, created the dialogue with Mr. Wu on a visit to Beijing in September. Analysts including Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington say the process risks being undermined without soon producing results on issues such as China’s managed exchange rate.

Neither Mr. Paulson nor Mr. Wu mentioned the yuan in their remarks.

Last week, the Chinese government increased the amount it lets the yuan fluctuate against the dollar to 0.5% a day, from 0.3%. The move failed to appease American lawmakers, with some noting that China had yet to let the yuan rise the maximum permitted under the previous limit. The biggest move against the dollar this year was 0.22% at the close on May 11. The yuan closed at 7.6547 per dollar in Shanghai yesterday.

“It was a useful step, a positive step,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview with CNBC yesterday. “The key is going to be the amount of flexibility within the trading band on a daily basis,” he added. “We need more flexibility over time.”

Mr. Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., traveled to China more than 70 times before becoming Treasury Secretary in July. He has made ties with China a top priority, skipping a gathering of Group of Eight finance ministers in Germany last week to prepare for yesterday’s talks.