RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping planned a casual summit at a sprawling California estate Friday, dispensing with formalities and aiming for closer personal ties and progress on high-stakes issues including cybersecurity and North Korea’s nuclear threats.
However, Obama’s urging of Xi to stop reported Chinese hacking against the U.S. could be overshadowed by new revelations that Obama’s own administration has been secretly collecting information about phone and Internet use. The actions of both China and the U.S. underscore the vast technological powers that governments can tap to gather information covertly from individuals, companies and other governments.
Obama, seeking to keep the matter from trailing him through two days of China meetings, addressed the surveillance programs for the first time Friday morning. He said the efforts strike “the right balance” between security and civil liberties as the U.S. combats terrorism.
“You can’t have 100 per cent security and then also have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society,” he said during a health care event in Northern California.
Obama was to arrive late in the day at the 200-acre (81-hectare) Sunnylands estate on the edge of the Mojave desert. Xi arrived in California on Thursday following a trip to Latin America, a region where China is seeking to expand its trade and influence.
The two leaders planned to hold a private meeting in the evening and then take questions from the media. They were also scheduled to hold a private working dinner and resume talks Saturday morning.
Obama told donors at a Democratic fundraiser Thursday that he understands the concerns many Americans have about the potential threat China’s rapid rise poses to the U.S.
“The transformation that’s taking place in China is extraordinary. And never in the history of humanity have we seen so many people move out of poverty so rapidly,” he said. “And yet, when you look at the challenges they face and you look at the challenges we face, I’ll take our challenges any day of the week.”
U.S. officials see Xi, who took office in March, as a potentially new kind of Chinese leader. He has deeper ties to the U.S. than many of his predecessors and appears more comfortable in public than the last president, Hu Jintao, with whom Obama never developed a strong personal rapport.
Already the White House is encouraged that Xi agreed to the unusual California summit. The talks will be void of the formal pageantry that Chinese leaders often expect during state visits at the White House.
For the U.S., the most pressing matter is China’s alleged cyberspying on the American government and on businesses. Obama is expected to warn Xi against continuing such practices, which China publicly denies.
Ahead of the summit, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers began pushing legislation that would punish countries that launch cyberattacks against the U.S. The bill would authorize the administration to draw up a list of cyberspies, and allow the U.S. to deny or revoke visas to foreign agents guilty of cybercrimes.
Obama will also be looking to build on Xi’s apparent impatience with North Korea’s nuclear provocations. The U.S. has welcomed Xi’s recent calls for North Korea to return to nuclear talks, though it’s unclear whether Pyongyang is ready to change its behaviour.
Xi is likely to press China’s claims of business discrimination in U.S. markets, and to express concern over Obama’s efforts to expand U.S. influence in the Asia-Pacific region, which China sees as an attempt to contain its growing power.
Obama and Xi first met before the Chinese leader took office in March. They weren’t slated to meet again until September, on the margins of an international economic summit in Russia, but both countries saw a need to move up their first meeting of the year, given the myriad issues that define their relationship.
The China summit kicks off a heavy foreign policy-focused stretch for Obama that includes trips to Europe and Africa later this month.
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