Summit to focus on 'big picture'of China-US ties

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, Barack Obama, are scheduled to meet on Friday and Saturday for the first time since both countries completed their latest leadership change.

During the summit, arranged at the Sunnylands estate, California, the two leaders will focus on the "big picture" of leading bilateral relations forward while taking care of both sides' interests, US analysts say.

Through informal working meetings and face-to-face interactions, observers say, the leaders of the world's top two economies will also cultivate a closer personal relationship.

"I think it is a very timely initiative, and a very much needed one," former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said of the summit in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"The American-Chinese relationship is the most important bilateral relationship of the world. Global economic stability and global security very much depend on the healthy, friendly, cooperative and mutually accommodating relationship between America and China," he noted.

In the eyes of former US Ambassador to China Stapleton Roy, the fact that the get-together is their first since Xi became president and Obama was re-elected "makes the meeting all the more significant."