President Xi leaves for US visit, UN summits

President Xi Jinping, left, and his US counterpart Barack Obama walk at the Annenberg Retreat of the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, California, on June 8, 2013. [Photo/Xinhua]

Besides plans to visit Boeing's Paine Field in Everett, Washington state, Xi will also tour Microsoft's campus in Redmond, where he may attend the China-US Internet Industry Forum hosted by Microsoft and the Internet Society of China. Guests include representatives from Baidu and Alibaba in China and from Apple, Facebook, Google and IBM in the US.

The New York Times reported at the weekend that the US and China are negotiating what could become the first arms control accord for cyberspace.

This involves a commitment by each country that it will not be the first to use cyberweapons to cripple the other's critical infrastructure.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to the report.

Yuan Peng, vice-president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, noted the economic challenges the two countries face amid a sluggish global recovery.

"The world is expecting the leaders of the two largest economies ... to shape a 'win-win' landscape of mutual benefit," Yuan said.

Xi will also visit a high school in Tacoma, sister city to the Chinese port of Fuzhou, Fujian province, where he served as city leader and signed the sister-city agreement in 1994.

Xi's entourage includes his wife Peng Liyuan; Wang Huning, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee; Li Zhanshu, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee; and State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

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