Cyber exchanges between the two militaries were not restarted, and negotiations over a bilateral investment treaty – a mutually beneficial rules-based framework that would go a long way in opening up both countries’ markets to increasingly globalized US and Chinese companies – were particularly disappointing. A year ago, there was an encouraging breakthrough on the investment treaty; this year, there was a setback, as the launch of explicit negotiations over which industries would be exempt – the always contentious “negative list” – was deferred until 2015.