WASHINGTON — When Tom Donilon, President Obama’s national security
adviser, met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week to discuss
his coming visit to the United States, China’s newly minted leader told
him he wanted a conversation with Mr. Obama that did not involve
diplomatic talking points. As if to underscore the message, he ignored
the notes sitting in front of him.
When Mr. Xi arrives on Friday for his first visit as president, Mr.
Obama will make his own symbolic gesture, welcoming him amid the olive
trees and artificial lakes of a 200-acre California estate.
In more than six hours of meetings over two days, with ample time for
dinner and a sunset stroll beneath the San Jacinto Mountains,
administration officials hope Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi, who met for the
first time last year in Washington, will really get to know each other,
while exchanging ideas about how best to manage a complex, sometimes
combustible relationship between the world’s two biggest economies.
It is an enormous bet on the power of personal diplomacy, in a setting
carefully chosen to nurture a high-level friendship.
