Last week top Chinese and American economic officials met in Washington for the second “Strategic Economic Dialogue.” While trade and exchange rates grabbed all the headlines, one less publicized subject was advice from the American side on how the Chinese can promote consumption in their domestic economy.

More consumption would presumably mean the Chinese would buy more American products and send less of their excess savings to the United States, leading eventually to a smaller Chinese trade surplus with the United States and the world.

How did U.S. government officials propose to promote more consumption in China? The Chinese were advised by their American friends to “create a social safety net for its population, similar to the Social Security and Medicare programs in the United States, so Chinese residents do not need to continue to save as much as 50 percent of their income for their retirement and future medical needs,” according to one trade newsletter.

Whoa. Would China’s economic managers really want to saddle its population with the same unsustainable government promises that characterize our two biggest entitlement programs? As my Cato colleagues have long noted, and as USA Today reported on its front page this week, the unfunded liabilities wracked up by those two programs has now reached more than $45 trillion (yes, that’s trillion).

I suppose saddling the Chinese economy with a huge, unfunded government obligation would be one way to “level the playing field.”