San Francisco, Oct. 8, (People's Daily Online) - The third US-China Governors' Forum hosted by California Governor Edmund G. Brown will kick off next month in Rancho Mirage, California.

The forum will be held on November 11-12 at Sunnylands, the historic Annenberg estate. As a platform to promote peer-to-peer discussions between U.S. governors and their Chinese counterparts, the forum will explore opportunities in promoting practical cooperation between the two sides, especially to local economic development.

"The 2014 U.S.-China Governors’ Forum comes at a critical time in our countries’ relationship. Our goal will be to bring together the world’s two largest economies to discuss investment, subnational economic cooperation, and shared ecological challenges," the California-China Office of Trade and Investment wrote in the invitation letter. "We expect more than a dozen U.S. and Chinese governors to attend, plus the highest executives representing our countries’ best known firms."

The China-U.S. Governors Forum was established by a U.S.-China Memorandum of Understanding signed during President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington in January 2011. It aims to strengthen a sub-national dialogue between the two countries.

Sunnylands, where the forum will be held, has hosted eight presidents in its time. It has always been a destination for thoughtful dialogues. The most recent one is between President Obama and President Xi Jinping.