Xi and Obama's meeting expected to enhance mutual trust: Chinese ambassador

WASHINGTON - Chinese President Xi Jinping's forthcoming meeting with his US counterpart Barack Obama is expected to enhance mutual trust, widen win-win cooperation and deliver guidance for management on differences between China and the United States.

"The upcoming meeting between the two heads of state, just as every strategic talk they have held in recent years, will produce very positive and important influence on China-US bilateral relations," Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the United States, said in a joint interview with Chinese-language news media here on Saturday.

Xi is scheduled to meet Obama during the G20 summit in east China's Hangzhou City next month.

Under the G20 mechanism, the two leaders have already conducted very much coordination and cooperation for years, Cui said, noting that it is also the world's wide expectation that China and the United States can work together to ensure the G20 Hangzhou Summit to achieve a full success.

As the top two economies in the world, China and the United States have responsibilities to play a larger role in ensuring that the Hangzhou summit can yield constructive results as many as possible, Cui said, adding communication channels between the two countries have always been running well.

More than 40 years ago, Hangzhou witnessed the negotiations for the first ever China-US joint communique, the ambassador recalled, stressing "a return to a place full of historic meaning reveals a lot about the direction we should follow."

"The history of their relationship has fully proven that the two global heavyweights must cooperate with each other and must become cooperative partners," said Cui, referring to the building of a new type of major-country relationship.

The ambassador also revealed that China has kept frequent contacts with the United States on the South China Sea issue, reiterating that the issue should not be allowed to define China-US ties since the two countries have neither disputes over even one inch of territory nor fundamental clash of interests in the South China Sea.

The upcoming meeting between Xi and Obama in Hangzhou is the most important agenda of China-US relations in the next stage, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his telephone talk with US Secretary of State John earlier this month.

At the time, Kerry said that the Xi-Obama meeting in Hangzhou is very important, noting the United States is willing to work together with China to ensure a full success of the G20 Hangzhou Summit.

The upcoming G20 summit, with the theme "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy", will be held in Hangzhou City on Sept 4-5.