The Hill News

When Chinese President Hu Jintao visits the United States this January for his first state visit under the Obama administration, the increasingly entwined destinies of the United States and China will never be starker. The persistent global economic downturn, the controversies around climate change, and the need for regional stability in Asia put our two nations at a critical point.  As the two leaders meet, their path forward has to be focused on the assimilation of our common interests and the need to find common ground to meet them.

When I visited China in November as part of a bipartisan delegation of former Senators sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, I saw a nation with the vast potential to be a constructive partner to the United States on many economic, security, and environmental issues. China of course faces core structural problems and some simmering anxieties, but that country was far different from the one I first visited i! n 1982. China, less than three decades ago, was a primitive, closed nation in comparison to the modern marvel that so fascinates the world today.

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