Despite festering tensions over debt, deficits and currency, US Vice President Joe Biden has one top priority during his trip to Asia this week: to get to know China’s next generation of leaders.
Biden left yesterday for a journey to China, Mongolia and Japan in what the White House views as further outreach to a continent at the top of its foreign priority list.
Biden’s own priorities are multipronged.
He will press Beijing to allow its yuan currency to rise more quickly against the US dollar, praise Mongolia for its successful democracy and offer solace in Tokyo as it deals with the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
However, Biden’s main goal will be building a relationship with his counterpart, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), who is widely expected to become president in 2013.
“Simply put, we’re investing in the future of the US-China relationship,” Tony Blinken, Biden’s national security adviser, said in a conference call. “One of the primary purposes of the trip is to get to know China’s future leadership, to build a relationship with Vice President Xi and to discuss with him and other Chinese leaders the full breadth of issues in the US-China relationship.”
Those issues span Taiwan, human rights and — casting a shadow over the trip — the recent debate over the yawning US deficit.
As the largest foreign holder of US debt, China wants sound management of Washington’s fiscal problems. Beijing berated Washington this month after its near-default on its debt.
Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress agreed earlier this month on a deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut the deficit, but the divisive political debate helped prompt a downgrade of the US credit rating from Standard and Poor’s.
Biden’s trip will be the first to China by a high-level US official since the crisis.
“The Chinese are going to be extremely interested in getting his take on what has occurred and what will occur in the US management of its deficit,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, a foreign policy expert at the -Washington-based Brookings Institution.
The getting-to-know-you process will offset the more weighty issues at the heart of Biden’s visit.
He will hold meetings with Xi and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) in Beijing and attend a meeting of US and Chinese business leaders as well as meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). On the last day of the trip, Biden and Xi will have an informal dinner at a local restaurant in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
“This trip will enable Vice President Biden to, you know, as a good politician does, take a read of the other guy,” Lieberthal of Brookings said.
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