US President Barack Obama is to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) next week on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit, as both sides take steps to move on after weeks of irascible exchanges.
Since Obama visited Hu in Beijing in November, the US and China have sparred at a distance over trade, currency disputes, Taiwan and Tibet, but each side has appeared to refocus on areas of common interest in recent days.
Hu’s decision to join Obama’s summit and Beijing’s recently expressed willingness to at least talk about new nuclear sanctions on Iran at the UN, was matched by a US move to delay a Treasury report that could have branded China a currency manipulator.
The two leaders will meet, probably on Monday, on the sidelines of the 47-nation summit in Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
One of the issues Obama will raise will be the Chinese currency, which many US officials and lawmakers believe is being kept artificially low by Beijing to make its exports more attractive.
“The administration will continue to press the Chinese to ... value their currency in a way that’s much more market-based,” Gibbs said.
There is growing impatience in Congress over China’s yuan strategy, with some lawmakers backing legislation that could include sanctions.
Signs of at least a temporary easing of difficult Sino-US relations emerged when Obama held a one-hour call with Hu while the US leader was flying home to Washington from Boston last week.
Obama “underscored the importance of working together to ensure that Iran lives up to its international obligations,” the White House said following the discussion.
Hu’s presence will add luster and credibility to the April 12 and 13 summit in Washington, which Obama hopes will draw a commitment to secure all loose nuclear material in the world within four years.
It will also draw attention to the US bid to frame a set of “biting” nuclear sanctions on Iran, which will be a subtext of the summit.
China, which has a close diplomatic and trade relationship with Iran, and is one of five veto-wielding members of the Security Council, has repeatedly called for a negotiated settlement rather than new punitive action.
But the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, last week said Beijing had “agreed to sit down and begin serious discussions” on drawing up new sanctions against Iran.
Earlier on Tuesday, China reiterated that its exchange rate policy was not to blame for a ballooning trade imbalance with the US.
“The RMB [yuan] exchange rate is not the reason for the trade deficit between China and the United States and the appreciation of the RMB is not the way to address the trade imbalance,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) said.
“China has never used ... currency manipulation in an effort to benefit from international trade — we hope the US side can view this question in an objective way,” she said.
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