US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to arrive in Beijing
and discuss a wide range of issues of common concern with top Chinese
officials, after wrapping up her visit to Indonesia yesterday, the second stop
of an 11-day, six-nation tour.
Clinton is scheduled to arrive in
Beijing today and hold talks with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. They will meet
reporters together tomorrow. Clinton will then travel to East Timor and Brunei,
before she represents US President Barack Obama at an Asia-Pacific summit in
Vladivostok, Russia, from Saturday to Sunday.
As Obama formally launches his
re-election bid at this week's Democratic convention in North Carolina, Clinton
is skipping the convention to build ties in Asia, especially as Washington's
relationship with Beijing increasingly encroaches on politics back home,
according to AFP.
Clinton's two-day visit will
probably be her last as the top US diplomat, as the presidential election is
drawing near. She visited Beijing in May when the two countries held the annual
strategic and economic dialogue.
Her China trip will be followed
by a visit from US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, who is expected to make his
first trip to China in mid-September with an eye on expanding mutual military
ties. Cai Yingting, deputy chief of General Staff of China army, also paid a
visit to the US in August.
High-level diplomatic visits are
important elements of the Sino-US relationship, one of the most important
bilateral ties in the world, according to Paul Haenle, director of
Beijing-based Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy, who was the China
director of the Bush administration.
"Given the facts that the
degree that our two countries can understand and better cooperate with each
other can impact the entire word, it is important that we raise the number and
level of the exchanges," he said.
There will be many topics on
Clinton's agenda, such as economic, security, regional and international
issues, according to Haenle. Attention will also be focused on the South China
Sea, according to experts and media reports, due to recent disputes in the region
and the intension of the Obama administration's pivot to Asia policy, which has
raised concerns from China.
The policy is not a shift but a
consistent one in the US' Asia-Pacific policy, as Washington has had a presence
there since World War II, Haenle said.
The biggest challenge for Sino-US
relations is improving the effectiveness of communication, according to Sun
Zhe, a professor on American studies at Tsinghua University.
"It is not possible for the
US to contain China and it costs too much to do that. From a rational
perspective, the US, as a responsible government, should work together with
China, and this is the right choice," said Jin Canrong, an American
studies professor at Renmin University.
Xinhua and AFP contributed to the
story.
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