NEW YORK, Oct. 19 -- The latest round of trade talks between China and the United States has sent "a positive sign" and shown that their current differences are "resolvable," a senior U.S. scholar said.

"It is obviously a positive sign that they are sending to the public," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"What it seems to give the impression off is that they are trying to create a floor they need for which their trade conflict will not slip any further," Gupta said.

The Oct. 10-11 high-level economic and trade consultations in Washington concluded with substantial progress in areas including agriculture, intellectual property rights, currency exchange rates, financial services, expansion of trade and technology transfers.

Highlighting China's move to further open up its financial sector, Gupta said the differences between the two countries are resolvable this time,

China's securities regulator announced last week a clear timetable for allowing full foreign ownership of financial service companies covering the sectors of fund management, brokerage and futures.

"This is just good because as China moves from a manufacturing-led and investment-led economy to a service-led and consumption-led economy, financial services sector plays a very important role in intermediating finance across the whole economy," the scholar said, adding that it "will do a great deal of good for China on (a) new growth model going forward."

He said that there are U.S. investors who are "absolutely keen" to operate and work in the Chinese market. "There's still a lot of positive investor sentiment for the medium and long term and using China as a hub for manufacturing."

During the first eight months of this year, China saw over 27,000 more foreign-owned businesses enter the Chinese market, and the actual use of foreign capital exceed 600 billion yuan (84.7 billion U.S. dollars), according to official statistics. Enditem