U.S. President Barack Obama said Wednesday that his summit meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this month will be "useful" and generate "a lot of outcomes."
Responding to questions after addressing members of The Business Roundtable, Obama said that these outcomes will be "around things like energy and climate change, around improvements in how they (Chinese) deal with investors."
On Sept. 22-25, Xi will pay his first state visit to the United States since taking office in 2013.
"I think our military-to-military conversations have been much better than they were when I began office," Obama said.
Obama said that China "should be and will continue to be an economic competitor," and the two countries need to reach an understanding about the U.S. presence as a Pacific power.
But it is in the U.S. interest for China to continue a "peaceful, orderly rise," Obama said. "I think that's good for the world."
The U.S. goal is to have China "as a partner in helping to maintain a set of international rules and norms that benefit everybody," Obama said.
Cyber security will probably be "one of the biggest topics that I discuss with President Xi," he said. The United States is aiming to create a basic international framework that will prevent the Internet from being weaponized. "That requires I think some tough negotiations," he added.
Cyber security is one of the hot topics that has flared up recently between the two countries.
China has rejected the U.S. accusations of its theft of U.S. trade secrets for economic gains through hacking operations, pointing out that the United States is the most advanced country in information technology and China is one of the biggest victims of cyber attacks.
Also, China insists that there is not a zero-sum game between the world's top two economies, a notion that some Americans hold, saying that both can develop and prosper by building a new model of major-country relationship that is based on equal and mutually beneficial cooperation.
