Meet heralds new type of ties

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama are expected to lay guidelines on a new type of great power relationship between Beijing and Washington at a "historic and strategically-important" summit starting Friday at Sunnylands in California.

The informal get-together is scheduled to start around 4 pm Friday, followed by a private dinner Friday evening and private discussions Saturday morning.

The first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since the leadership transition in both countries has "profound historic and strategic significance," China's foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said Thursday.

The bilateral summit has drawn worldwide attention, with the New York Times, The Telegraph and The Australian comparing its significance to that of the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva, which "ultimately paved the way for the ending of the Cold War." The Telegraph also commented that there is the tantalizing prospect that the two leaders can start the most productive new phase in US-China relations since Richard Nixon met Mao Zedong in 1972.

The meeting comes at a sensitive time, as the US has accused China of cyber hacking and US defense secretary Chuck Hagel confirmed the deployment of 60 percent of the US navy fleet to the Asia Pacific region by 2020.

"Both leaders have realized there is a danger that the rising power and the established power could come to a conflict at some point," said senior administration officials at a White House conference call Tuesday. "To avoid the rivalry, it is important to put in place ways of interaction," they said.

While exchanging ideas on specific issues, Xi and Obama will also hold discussions at a strategic level, shedding light on a new type of great power relationship, which both sides vowed to develop.

The model seeks to forge a new path, which is different from the old expectations where a rising power is likely to clash with an established power, said China's Assistant Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang last week ahead of Xi's visit.

The idea of the new relationship was first raised by Xi in February 2012 during his visit to the US as Chinese vice president, and has received positive feedback from Washington over the past year. In a phone conversation congratulating Xi on his election as president on March 14, Obama said the US hopes to work with China to build a new type of inter-power relations based on healthy competition rather than a strategic game.