By Minxin Pei

March 9, 2015

"The recent announcement in Washington and Beijing that Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to the United States in September underscores the continuing momentum in the improvement of bilateral relations since the landmark U.S.-China climate agreement reached in Beijing last November. In the months leading to President Xi's U.S. visit, however, both countries will need to work hard to create favorable conditions for a productive summit.

The U.S. and China have high stakes in a successful state visit by Xi. To the Chinese leader, such a visit will not only bolster his domestic political standing, but also help forge what he has called "a new type of great power relations" (a designation that has yet to be formally embraced by the U.S.). Since taking office in November 2012, Mr. Xi has been hosted as the Chinese head of state in all the capitals of major countries except Washington. For a top Chinese leader, a formal state visit to the U.S. is considered a mark of recognition by the world's most powerful country. Xi's predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, took years to get their ticket to Washington. Jiang paid his state visit to the U.S. in 1997, eight years after he became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S. did not occur until January 2011, about eight years after he became the Chinese president (Hu did come to Washington in 2006, but that was not officially a state visit, at least according to the White House). In Xi's case, he took less than three years to secure the much-coveted invitation for a state visit to the U.S., handily beating both of his successors."

Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/minxin-pei/xi-jinping-washington_b_6829300.html

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