China is a technocracy whose leaders are scientists, engineers, technicians, economists, and businessmen. President Hu Jintao earned his degree in hydraulic engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1965. Observers say that he appears rather bland, and he is known for "technocratic competence rather than personality." Vice President Xi Jinping earned his degree in chemical engineering from Tsinghua University in 1979. Observers say that Xi is more open, but pragmatic. Lee Kuan Yew, the former Singaporean prime minister, said that he is "in the Nelson Mandela class of persons." Henry Paulson said that he is "the kind of guy who knows how to get things over the goal line." A 2011 Washington Post article claimed, based on interviews with those who knew Xi, that he was "pragmatic, serious, cautious, hard-working, down to earth and low key. They also say he is a problem-solver and a leader seemingly uninterested in the trappings of high office." When Xi served as governor of Zhejiang Province in 2002-2006, the economic growth rate averaged 14% per year. He was appointed to lead Shanghai after a corruption scandal and was known for his honesty and hard work until he was chosen to be vice president in 2008.

Xi Jinping is a competent professional who will succeed another competent professional, so China's economic growth should continue, and its growth relative to the US may accelerate. For the past decade, the US has destroyed US computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and fertilizer, the basic parts of smart munitions. The US has destroyed US ground and air vehicles. The US has burned billions of gallons of US gasoline, diesel fuel, and aviation fuel. The US has wasted billions of man hours in unproductive work, and these problems will continue through the end of 2014 unless the US becomes entangled in another conflict. China has made the products and sold them for profit. China has used the fuels to move cargo and passengers for profit. China has used the man hours to make products to sell.

The US trades with 50% of the world, but China trades with 100% of the world. The US says that other countries are bad. Americans are former slave owners, former Jim Crow enforcers, and former genocidal mass murderers of native Americans. Without trying to criticize the US, if the US chooses 50% while China chooses 100%, the winner of the trade competition is obvious.

The biggest threat has come from Homeland Security. Before 9-11, 60% of US scientists, engineers, and technicians came from Asia. After 9-11, Homeland Security limited visas for Asians, and many of these people set up companies that competed with US firms. Other Asians followed their example rather than try for US visas. US firms began relocating to Asia because they could not be certain that Homeland Security would let in enough scientific talent. The US once produced only 30% of the scientific talent that it once needed, but so many US companies have gone to Asia that 2.5 million US scientists, engineers, and technicians could not find jobs in the US in 2011.

In addition, 13% of US students major in the sciences compared to 50% in China. Based on differences in populations, China produces 17 times as many scientists as the US. In a recent international test, Chinese students in Shanghai scored 1st in math and 1st in science while the US scored 31st in math and 23rd in science. Hong Kong was tested separately and its students were 3rd in math and 3rd in science. China rises, and the US falls each year in university rankings according to the British; China rises, and the US falls each year in competitiveness rankings according the Swiss (WEF). China builds 60% of the world's new R & D facilities, and the US only 2.5%. China's GDP growth in 2011 was 9.2% while the US rose 1.7%. The IMF estimates that China will overtake the US in 2016. They use purchasing power parity that takes into account the differences in prices in different countries for the same or equivalent goods.

The point is that the US must face the change in global dominance sooner than expected. Most thought that it would happen in 2050 after they were dead. The destruction of the wars, US decisions on trade, the problems created by excessive zeal in Homeland Security, and China's exploding dominance in the sciences that create most of the world's wealth have combined to make China's leadership a compelling interest for the US. This brings up the last US problem. Chinese leaders know the sciences, and they have been carefully tested to find those who succeed. American leaders are lawyers, preachers, and propagandists. US voters choose handsome or pretty cheerleaders with big mouths and doubtful intelligence. The US might consider amending the US Constitution to require degrees in the sciences for candidates for president, vice president, cabinet secretaries, senators, and representatives. Until then, US leaders will likely have difficulty making policies that are equal to or better than the policies of Chinese leaders.

For once I strongly disagree with Walt's point. These types of personal visits have the virtue of humanizing China's leader. If their leadership is just viewed as face-less tyrants, then it is so much easier for some deranged political movement to arise in this country calling for a more militarily aggressive foreign policy.

The US has insulted China on a number of occasions over the last decade. I discuss these with a few mainland Chinese friends and they come up to this day. We bombed their embassy in Belgrade and they believe it was deliberate (I agree with them). Then there was the incident in Bush's first year where an American recon plane collided with a Chinese fighter. Obama and Hillary's recent aggressive rhetoric about asserting our right to be a major player in the South China Sea was just dangerous grandstanding. Why should we care one way or the other who controls the Sprately Islands -- talk about drawing stupid lines in the sand.

In any case this visit has the potential to soften American's attitudes towards China. I remember clearly Deng Hsiao Ping's visit in the early 80s and how he charmed so many Americans. With the one caveat that he took us to the cleaners in the trade negotiations, that was a productive and peace enhancing visit.

Believe it or not, this is the first news to reach my eyes of China's future leader visiting the United States. Did not even know his name.

Would never discount the importance of a visit from a head of State to our country. Such a visit always implies matters of importance being discussed between governments. What they are is mysterious.

Hard to imagine considering matters like international relations without taking into account the Crusades, the Thirty Years War, the centuries of battle between Shi'ites & Sunnis, etc., That some politicians use religious or racial enmity to generate conflict does not imply religious differences do not really exist. The analyst who will not discuss the religious nature of antagonisms in assessing Iran might then become befuddled when evaluating a circumstance wherein such assumed conflicts cannot be said to exist. There does not exist discernible religious/racial antagonism between the United States & China in the sense that such exist between Iran & Israel | Iran & the Sunni States.

North Korea is a matter that clearly concerns China in a way that deeply affects the United States, especially given its proximity to our fifty-first State, Japan. Afghanistan & Pakistan lie West of China; unfettered departure of American troops is vital to China. .Great care must be taken at the highest level to ensure no ill will between China & the US is occasioned by either matter. What does Prof. Walt think about these two issues?

"The last reason why I'm inclined to discount the significance of this sort of visit is the fact that nobody can read minds."
Thanks, I agree.
But, the ruling "Mental Illness" ideology/religion in the USA, headed psychology/psychiatry priests, preach otherwise.
Journalists believe the ideology so they go for mind reading. Academics ignore the ideology and go for hysterical optimism.

The argument that China will succeed while the US's international power wanes because China will do business with ANYONE, utlimately, will undo China, as more savvy countries know that they are unscupulous and not to be trusted. China's lack of honesty abroad reflects its same practices internally - it is a self-serving technocracy, essentially with a large oligarchy foisting communist ideology on a middle class that prospers, for now, and a lower class that does not. Daily there are demonstrations and other actions within China against local, state and country authorities against their corruption and state policies. When China's economy slows down a bit more, then these problems will intensify, at the same time that job scarcity and higher prices hit, and then China will have a real problem.

Little mention was made in articles yesterday about Tibet, and the ongoing self-immolations. Or the continued mistreatment of Uighurs, Falang Gong and other mistreated groups in China. It is easy to assume that since China has been on the ascent with nary a stumble, that this is natural state and will continue. But as we know from physics, the larger an object, the more energy needed to continue the same rate of ascent. Once the US's housing market was thought to be a sure bet, incapable of failing. One day soon the proud benefactor of Bassar, the Sudan, North Korea and the military junta of Burma will be proven to be ordinary and fallible, and then the US will take a different approach to these stage managed PR events with China. Perhaps they will invivte the Dalai Lama to D.C. at the same time - wouldn't that be fun!

In the opening of this article, the perfesser makes it clear he knows little or nothing about the Xi visit. He then makes it clear this -- to his mind -- in no way disqualifies him from spraying his fantasy-based imaginings all over the place, as though they matter.

Pretty remarkable going from a man able to write "Apart from traffic snarls in Washington and some feel-good stories from Iowa, I wonder how significant the visit was ... I wasn't present for any of the private discussions, of course, and I have no idea what impression top U.S. officials took away from their exchanges. I know even less about what Xi or his entourage concluded."

It's the "of course" that's particularly galling and offensive. It wasn't just the private meetings Mr Walt wasn't present for. He wasn't present for any damn thing associated with this Chinese official's meeting. There's no sign he ever stirred from his office. And, as we see, his keyboard. Maybe he didn't make it to his office, and wrote this piece in his pajamas. Nonetheless, he claims that in what he fantasizes, he's a good realist.

Thus expires any respect realists have earned otherwise.

Heads of State and others have been made courtesy calls on each other since the beginning of recorded history. It is a normal human thing, even pugilists shake hands or whatever before they proceed to knock the living daylights out of each other. Like 'Reason', it is one of the veils with which we shroud our natural bestiality.

What is particularly interesting here, however, is the good doctor's unreservedly confrontational perceptions; not a glimmer of expectation that the US and China might find themselves in amicable accord sometime over the next decade. Also, if we cannot read others' minds, and I am not so sure about that, we can certainly draw impressions that have every likelihood of being soundly based.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's UN envoy has more than once recently referenced what he calls, 'The US philosophy of confrontation', and here we see it manifesting as complete blindness to the possibility of anything but ongoing conflicts. This confrontational US approach is crippling the UN which is supposed to be a peace achieving forum, turning it instead into an combat arena, it has also wrecked devastation in places too numerous to list, most recently Libya now awash with humanitarian violations while lacking Gadaffi's educational, social and industrial infrastructure. The Syrian issue is a current example of it at work again; here the US, which has been fomenting anti-regime groups for years, is now arming rebels, unacknowledged, of course, like a child that covers his eyes thinking he cannot be seen, while there are so many different groups of rebels it is doubtful the US knows where it's clandestine arsenals end up once over the Turkish border. What is darkly beautiful about this is that the US and al-Qaeda are once again rowing in the same boat, and it is scarcely beyond the possible that some of those US arms are reaching al-Qaeda. Osama must be laughing in his watery beard. Along with this absurdity go Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice demonising Russia for pointing out that there is no single group opposed to Assad so ousting him alone will simply set the others at each others' throats, armed with the additional weaponry the West has poured like fuel on a fire. Their outbursts of petulance and impatience cut no ice; as one Russian said, Those who get angry are usually wrong. What is sad is that the US is beginning to arouse not fear or respect but disdain. I have watched the GOP foreign policy gaffes LINK video broadcast several times on Russian and other non-US TV stations. Armed attacks are one thing, but what do you do when they start laughing at you.

Given how no one-party state survives the ten years after hosting an Olympics, Xi Jinping may well be China's Mikhail Gorbachev in seeing the demise of the CCP's political monopoly in Beijing. I can only hope he'll help make it a smooth regime change - for once in China's history.

The author is right about the obvious, but this visit IS IMPORTANT nonetheless.

Don't hype this but don't downplay this.

The next then years will be quite important. even when the ten after will be even more so.

Chinese leaders from 2020-2040 will be more important than the next one, true.

What is darkly beautiful about this is that the US and al-Qaeda are once google reklam ajans? again rowing in the same boat, and it is scarcely beyond the possible that some of those US arms are reaching al-Qaeda. Osama must be laughing in his watery beard. Along with this absurdity google reklam go Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice demonising Russia for pointing out that there is no single group opposed to Assad so ousting him alone will simply set the others at each others' throats, google reklam ver armed with the additional weaponry the West has poured like fuel on a fire.

Dr. Steven Walt may earn more money by teaching GRE critical writing than by teaching foreign policy at Harvard! Just kidding :) Anyway, an excellent argument essay although I do think he actually has downplayed some real politics.