Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is set to make a state visit to the US later this year, his first since becoming the top leader of Asia’s biggest economy.
No date has been set yet for the visit, Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai (崔天凱) told reporters over the weekend, the official China Daily newspaper reported.
Cui’s announcement came after US President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice extended an invitation on Friday to Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to come to Washington for a state visit. Rice also invited South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Summit meetings between the leaders of the US and China, the world’s two biggest economies, are always major events, and there is likely to be pressure on both sides to deliver something from this planned one. A meeting between Xi and Obama in Beijing in November last year yielded a major agreement on controlling greenhouse gases.
There are many contentious issues between the two nations, including concerns about cybersecurity and tensions between China, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines over territorial claims in the East and South China seas.
US National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the White House was still in the process of determining mutually convenient times for the visits by Xi and Abe, whom officials “very much look forward to hosting.”
The announcement of their visits and separate ones by the presidents of South Korea and Indonesia later this year “underscore our enduring and ongoing commitment to our Asia-Pacific rebalance strategy,” Ventrell said. “We will use these visits to expand our economic, diplomatic and defense cooperation with all these countries.”
Cui, speaking to Chinese news media outlets, likened ties between the US and China to the lead characters in a popular Chinese cartoon. He expressed hope that in the coming Chinese Year of the Sheep, bilateral ties would be more like a “gentle goat” who is the main character, and less like the mischievous wolf who plots to eat the goats.
Obama and Xi have met several times, but Xi has never been hosted in Washington for an official state visit. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), made a state visit four years ago.
Xi came to the US as vice president in 2012. He visited Muscatine, Iowa, where he had spent some time on an official exchange program in the 1980s. He and Obama also met at the Sunnylands retreat in California in June 2013.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a faxed request asking for confirmation of Cui’s comments.
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