(Xi's U.S. Visit) Interview: Xi's visit constructive action-forcing event to promote ties, says American expert

Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming U.S. visit is "generally a positive and constructive action-forcing event" to promote Sino-U.S. ties and cooperation, said a leading U.S. expert on China.

Xi's forthcoming summit with U.S. President Barack Obama later this week will make key progress on the most pressing issues, Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"I think this visit will stress the areas of important cooperation on some major issues such as the Iran nuclear deal, climate change, especially with the Paris meeting coming up this year," Lieberthal said, referring to the UN climate change conference in Paris.

The visit "will go well and you have some positive news coming out of it," said the former White House senior director for Asia at the National Security Council.

There will be serious discussion of strategic issues of mutual concern during Xi's visit, said Lieberthal.

"I think they will have ample opportunities to do that. And it's this deeper mutual engagement on these issues that can be critically important, as both sides manage their positions with each other and with allies and friends as they confront major concerns in the region and globally," he said.

Lieberthal said the summit will be a success if it conveys to people in both countries that Washington and Beijing, despite the differences between them, continue to be able to cooperate for mutual benefits, and to be able to manage differences which could threaten to become disruptive.

"So these are things in which the benefit is that they avoid future problems or reduce the chances of future problems," he said.

The upcoming summit will be the third between Xi and Obama following their informal summit at Sunnylands in California in June 2013 and a summit at the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing last November.

The previous two summits produced major breakthroughs, including an agreement on building a new model of major-country relations to avoid zero-sum rivalry, and an agreement on climate change.

Lieberthal said the joint statement on climate change released after the second summit showed the world that the cooperation on that is of fundamental importance to the future of the world.

There are other areas where the U.S.-China relationship has become more tense, but their common goal is to build more confidence and mutual understanding to be able to find ways to reduce the tension, he added.

Indeed, the Sino-U.S. ties have witnessed occasional tensions over such issues as South China Sea, cyber security, currency policy and human rights in the past few years.

In order to reduce mistrust and expand cooperation, Lieberthal said, the two countries need to keep broad common interests in mind and need more understanding of the genuine perceptions of the situations from the other side.

He suggested that the two sides take more confidence-building measures to enhance mutual trust, including expanding military-to-military ties, deepening consultations on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, letting China join the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty, and advancing the talks on the U.S.-China investment treaty. Enditem

Editor's note:

From Tuesday to Friday, Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay his first state visit to the United States since he took office in 2013. Xinhua is wiring a series of in-depth stories on China-U.S. relations and the historic visit.

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