A meeting of immense scope

The last few years have been tough on US-China relations, and distrust over long-term intentions has grown on both sides. But now that a new leadership has taken over the reins in China and the Barack Obama administration has started its second term in the US, how can things be set onto a better path? Anything even remotely like a Cold War in Asia would be unwelcome in the region and reduce the possibilities of effectively managing the issues ranging from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Iran to climate change.

Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping will meet in California for private talks on June 7-8. This meeting comes amid a stream of high-level Sino-US contacts - Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew, Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to Beijing, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to the Shangri-La Dialogue, where he met People's Liberation Army representatives, and the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in July in Washington.

But the meeting of the two presidents in California is unique. Never before have American and Chinese leaders sat down outside their respective capitals for a wide-ranging dialogue that will continue for many hours and is not tightly constrained by the requirements of an official visit. The fact that the two leaders have previously spent only 90 minutes with each other - when Xi was still vice-president - makes the meeting all the more significant. And the fact that both are confident enough to have this type of meeting is good news.