China’s Xi arrives Monday for high-level policy meetings

The expected future leader of China will land in Washington on Monday for a week of high-profile meetings with top Obama administration officials and U.S. business leaders to discuss trade, human rights and security issues.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to take over leadership of China in March 2013, will meet with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will head over to the Pentagon to meet with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, all on Tuesday.

{mosads}The 58-year-old Xi heads up to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with congressional leaders before leaving for Iowa, a state he visited as a government official on a trip in 1985, for meetings on agricultural policy.

In the final stop of the trip, Xi travels to Los Angeles for at two-day visit to meet with city and state officials, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Gov. Jerry Brown (D). Biden will head out to meet back up with Xi for final meetings before he returns to China.

Xi may even try to fit in a Los Angeles Lakers game — the team and basketball are popular in China.

No major policy decisions are expected during the week-long visit — a reciprocal trip following Biden’s tour of China in August — although discussion of key issues will continue regarding a broad range of economic and trade issues along with regional and global developments, as part of maintaining a close relationship. 

In a phone conversation with Xi last week, Biden emphasized the importance of building a U.S.-China relationship that addresses practical issues important to both countries, expressing support for efforts to further develop bilateral cooperation.

“We’ve pursued this strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific because we’re focused on increasing our presence in the fastest growing market in the world, which is absolutely critical to achieving the administration’s goal of doubling U.S. exports and creating jobs back at home,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, in a conference call with reporters. 

Daniel Russel, senior director for Asian affairs and the White House’s top expert on China, said “there are elements of competition and elements of cooperation in the relationship.” 

The sometimes tense relationship between the U.S. and China is regularly scrutinized by congressional lawmakers who are bearing down on the Obama administration to get tough on China’s currency, intellectual property and indigenous innovation issues they say give one of the world’s fastest growing economies an unfair international trade advantage. 

“We are building up areas of cooperation, we’re dealing consistently and directly with our differences, and we’re managing problems,” he said. 

“As the president has articulated frequently, we welcome the rise of China at the same time that we insist that China adhere to accepted rules and norms of regional and global economic and security behavior.”

Michael Froman, deputy national security advisor, called China one of the most important bilateral relationships for the United States, noting the two nations, in the past several years, are making progress on a whole range of issues including the exchange rate, which has been appreciating since June 2010.  

“So it’s a market of great potential for us, and the relationship is extremely important,” he said. 

Much of that relationship is being developed through frequent high-level meetings with Chinese leaders.

“There are always going to be ups and downs in the relationship, but the high tempo of meetings that the president has had with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao is an important component of the Obama administration’s ability to manage this extraordinarily complex relationship, and I think the reason that that engagement is important is because it allows us to set expectations to reduce misunderstandings,” Russel said. 

“It helps us to build confidence and avoid surprises in either direction.”

Still, the officials said that Xi isn’t expected to break new ground although it will continue the dialogue of discussions. 

“But the trip will be very important, as an opportunity, as I said, for us to learn more about him, to build on the work that we have been doing over the past three years, and the vice president’s trip and, again, to allow him to broaden his understanding of the United States,” Russel said.