The talks were "warm and very positive," Perry told reporters after the hour-long meeting at the East Lake Guesthouse on the Yangtze river in Hubei province.
But Jiang delivered a standard rebuff when Perry voiced U.S. concerns over human rights, saying China had embarked on an independent course of democratic centralism and had "many people to feed and clothe," the defense official said.
Beijing maintains that the "subsistence rights" of food, shelter and employment take precedence over political and civil rights, which it says will evolve in due course.
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