In a bid to ensure the issue does not overshadow this summit, the two sides have already announced they will hold working group level talks on cyber security in July.
North Korea will also come up, with US officials encouraged at signs that China is becoming impatient with Pyongyang’s saber rattling.
Xi will also be interested in hearing Obama explain his signature diplomatic and military pivot to Asia, which has irked China, where some observers have worried it is about containing Beijing’s rise.
Obama is under pressure to tackle what US business leaders complain are China’s predatory economic policies and the theft of US intellectual property.
There is already speculation in Washington as to the next steps, should Xi and Obama get along.
John Frisbie, president of the US-China Business Council said the talks were 50 percent successful already just for taking place at this early date.
“Depending on how this weekend goes, the next step … might be an annual presidential summit,” he said.
“Many people, ourselves included … feel this is an important bilateral relationship, one of the most important, if not the most important for each country.”
Ahead of the talks, activists and family members of political prisoners incarcerated in Chinese jails called on Obama to make human rights a priority at the talks.
“President Obama should stop the trade-centered diplomacy and instead make it a human rights-centered diplomacy,” said Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer who escaped house arrest for the US embassy in Beijing last year.
Obama visited China in 2009, and granted Xi’s predecessor a state visit in 2011.
About The Author
