When Chinese leader Xi Jinping makes his first state visit to the US in September, his list of talking points might be longer than some of his talks.
Accepting Barack Obama’s invitation in a Tuesday night phone call, Xi said that the US and China should “broaden cooperation in economy and trade, military, energy, environmental protection, infrastructure and law enforcement”, the state newswire Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
Xi will urge Washington to “loosen restrictions on export of high-tech products to China and take actions to facilitate Chinese investments in the United States,” Xinhua said.
During the call, the two leaders also discussed cybersecurity, climate change, global development, public-health hazards (including Ebola), people-to-people exchange, North Korea, Iran’s nuclear program and “the 70th anniversary of the victory over Fascism”, the newswire continued.
Analysts say that the sprawling agenda suggests that neither side has settled on its priorities. “Since Obama and Xi came to power, there was this arrangement that they would be meeting on an annual basis,” said Steve Tsang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Nottingham. In 2013, the two met at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, California; last year, Obama visited Beijing. Now, it’s once again Xi’s turn to travel.
“A lot of things will happen between now and [September],” Tsang continued. “Right now it’s more important that the Chinese announce the visit as a way of signaling that they’re developing a relationship with Obama – and that they are, in a sense, driving it. They haven’t yet set a destination as to where it goes. But at the end of the day, they can’t really set the destination without agreement from the Americans. I see this all as more symbolic than substantive.”
The US-China relationship has been strained in recent years by repeated cyber-attacks, conflicting positions on human rights and freedom of speech, and Beijing’s aggressive territorial claims over disputed areas of the South and East China seas.
Xi and Obama exchanged new year’s greetings during their phone call on Wednesday. “Over the past year, we have had a series of in-depth talks, reaching important consensus on China-US ties as well as significant issues concerning regional and international peace and development,” the Chinese president said, according to the newswire.
Yet both leaders made note of their concerns. Obama called for “swift work” to improve cooperation on cybersecurity, Reuters reported – for years, Washington has accused Chinese hackers of repeatedly targeting US institutions. Xi warned the US against “unfavorable interference” on the issues of Tibet and Taiwan, two perennial sticking points in the relationship.
During the Sunnylands meeting, Xi spoke about a “new type of great power relations” between the United States and China, implying that the two countries should regard one another as equals. Since then, the term has become a regular fixture in official speeches and in the state-run press. Obama, while meeting with Xi in November 2014, did not publicly mention the term once.
“One thing that will always be important here is the state of the Chinese economy compared to the state of the US economy,” Tsang said. “If the Chinese economy weakens, and the US economy continues on a robust trajectory, the conversation is going to be slightly different than if the US economy is slowing and the Chinese economy is strengthening. We’ll have to see where things go in the next seven or eight months.”
