Xi's all set for his mission to America - but what is it?

Vice-President Xi Jinping will visit the United States this week. But what exactly will he be doing there - apart from visiting a family he stayed with in Muscatine, Iowa, in 1985 when he visited as an agricultural official, and perhaps watching a National Basketball Association match?

Xi has three missions, said Professor Jin Canrong , deputy dean of Renmin University's school of international relations. The first is to 'give a signal' to the US that, however unfavourable its domestic politics are to bilateral relations, China is still willing to maintain good ties.

His second mission is to develop personal friendships with American leaders, so that they can have a better understanding of each other's political agendas 'in the future'. The phrase 'in the future' is important - it is an open secret that, according to leadership succession practice, Xi will take over as secretary general of the Communist Party, it's top official, later this year, but before the US general election. In this context, 'future' means the two countries' political relationship over the next four or five years at least.

And the third mission, Jin said, would be for Xi to gain a better understanding of American society, and to share China's position with more of its people.

Contrary to the good wishes of the professor, the reality is that Sino-US ties, as Deputy Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai recently said more than once, suffers a stubborn 'trust deficit'. On February 3, for instance, Cui told US visitors that in an election year there must be particular vigilance against the tendency to politicise economic and trade issues between the two sides.

A commentary in the official People's Daily on Friday was more pointed. It noted that since the second half of last year, there had been mounting pressure from the US over trade and business relations, the yuan exchange rate and alleged problems in China's investment environment. That pressure was compounded, it said, by a high-profile 'return to Asia' by the US military, with increasing signs that China was being singled out as America's primary rival. 'The strategic misgivings between China and the US, as it were, have never abated,' the commentary said.