Before Joe Biden left China this week, the last thing Vice President Xi Jinping told him over dinner was simple: he wants to be friends. If that happens, the US vice president may be the first Western leader to have an inside view into the nature of the little-known man who is expected to take over the helm of the world's second largest economy in 2013. Biden spent about five days in China on a multi-nation Asia tour designed to shore up relationships with key allies and assure the world that, despite its deficit woes, the United States is not in decline. But his journey had another strategic mission: get to know his counterpart, 58-year-old Xi, who is expected to replace President Hu Jintao in roughly 18 months. Biden came away with impressions that could have an important bearing on perhaps the most important bilateral relationship in the world. During the visit, US officials said Xi appeared keen to get more comfortable with the United States despite the many disputes that divide them. His projected warmth runs counter to some analysts' predictions that Xi could turn to angry nationalism to prop up his authority. “I found him to be totally engaging,” Biden said of Xi in an interview with three reporters traveling with him in Asia. “In my one-on-one meeting with him, as well as very small group meetings...he genuinely is open about the nature and the extent of their problems, what they're going to have to deal with, short-term and long-term.” Biden described Xi as both pragmatic and strong, even praising him in a meeting with Hu in Beijing. Xi, who studied chemical engineering and is married to a popular folk singer, seemed as interested in getting a window into US thinking as Washington was in understanding his. Tall and slightly stooped, Xi grew up in the privileged yet demanding confines of a Communist leader's family. He saw the tumult and suffering of China's grassroots firsthand during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when, like many urban youths, he was sent down to work in the poor countryside. In public, Xi appears confident and comes across as straight-forward. He does not smile as much as his cheerful US counterpart but is less stiff than the more reserved man he is to replace, Hu. In 2009, Xi made a famously blunt warning that he does not want China to shoulder the responsibilities of a full-fledged superpower while it focuses on amassing wealth and power. “Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us,” he said during a visit to Mexico. “First, China does not export revolution; second, it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess around with you. So what else is there to say?” But on a policy level, Biden said Xi understood the symbiotic relationship between the US and Chinese economies and wanted to avoid big surprises between the two nations.
