Senior US officials said China had expressed confidence in America’s economic strength and insisted that none of the harsh criticism Beijing has publicly directed at Washington had showed in the closed-door conversations.
The assertion comes as Washington is eager to build a relationship with Xi Jinping, the Chinese vice- president who is expected to become China’s next leader in late 2012, and not have bilateral relations disrupted by the lingering Chinese perception of a US decline.
One senior administration official said Mr Xi had “expressed great confidence in the fundamentals of our economy, the US economy and prospects for the future.” Another US official said Mr Biden’s counterparts had expressed the “recognition that the US will continue to be a dominant power” politically and economically.
But the Chinese hosts added a sour note at the beginning of Mr Biden’s meeting with Mr Xi when Chinese security officials pushed reporters out of the room before the US vice-president had finished his introductory remarks.
“It’s over, it’s over, let’s go,” said a foreign ministry press handler. When reporters and US staff refused to leave, the officials manhandled both groups and even tried to remove the US stenographer, who keeps the official record of the meeting, from the room.
Such treatment of the media is common during China visits of foreign heads of government, but Thursday’s incident was rougher than usual.
China’s official media have also directed a barrage of criticism at the US for its debt woes in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency, said in an editorial: “The days when the debt-ridden Uncle Sam could leisurely squander unlimited overseas borrowing appeared to be numbered. To cure its addiction to debts, the United States has to re-establish the common sense principle that one should live within one’s means.”
But in the context of Mr Biden’s visit, Chinese media have adopted a softer tone. Xinhua’s official account of the meeting between Mr Biden and Mr Xi on Thursday echoed the US line that the two powers had a joint responsibility to keep the global economy stable. It did not say that Mr Xi had mentioned US debt to his guest.
US officials said their Chinese counterparts were trying to understand how the deal to raise the US debt ceiling, which was partly brokered by Mr Biden, had come about. “They were interested in hearing about the dynamics of the discussion,” one official said.
In the early afternoon, Mr Biden visited a traditional Beijing restaurant in a highly-scripted performance, ordering noodles in front of the cameras to have lunch with his granddaughter, who studies Chinese in the US and is visiting with him.
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