Chinese President Xi Jinping said his visit to the United States aims to chart out the blueprint for the development of the Sino-US relations and start cross-Pacific cooperation, while he started the meeting with his American counterpart Barack Obama at the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Estate at Sunnylands in California on Friday.

US President Barack Obama meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California June 7, 2013. [Photo/Agencies]

At the start of the talk, Xi thanked Obama for the invitation and said the location of the meeting is quite close to the Pacific Ocean and China is just on the other side.

Xi said that when he was visiting the US last year, he said the Pacific Ocean is broad enough for two powers of China and the US and today he sticks to the same belief.

After a brief review of the China-US relations in the past 40 years, Xi said the bilateral relationship is at a historical starting point. China and the US have a lot of mutual interests from economic development of each country to the recovery and stability of global economy, from handling regional and international security issues to global challenges, so both countries should seek even more exchanges and cooperation.

Xi said he believes the talks in California will achieve significant and positive results and inject more vitality into the bilateral relations.

Obama said meeting Xi in a short period of just less than three months after Xi was elected as the top leader of the Chinese government shows the importance that the US attaches to developing the US-China relations.

He said another aspect showing the importance is the arrangement of the meeting in which Xi and Obama will meet several times at the Annenberg Estate, known as the David Camp in the West. The leaders will be able to discuss a wide scope of issues and the development of bilateral relations in an informal and candid way.

At the start of the meeting, Obama also said he believes such constructive and frank discussions will be very important to the US-China relations.

He reiterated the US welcomes the peaceful rise of China to become a global power and the rise of a peaceful, stable and prosperous China is not only in the interest of China, but also in the interest of the US and the world.