President Xi Jinping is setting a cracking pace in his first few months in office as China firms up its role as a leading power and assumes a commensurately higher stature in international affairs. Quickly moving on from his fruitful March summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, he bolstered relations with African allies with visits to Tanzania, South Africa (for the BRICS conference) and the Republic of Congo. Back in China he delivered the keynote address to the Boao Forum in Hainan on "Working together toward a better future for Asia and the world".

More recently Xi surprised diplomats by hosting almost simultaneous visits to Beijing by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Not surprisingly, the two did not meet face-to-face during their visits. Xinhua said in an editorial: "China's hosting of the two emphasized its involvement in Mideast affairs and highlighted its role as a responsible power." China has long-standing friendships across the Muslim world and is the third-largest trading partner of Israel after the US and the EU.

Xi has also brought forward to June 7-8 his first meeting as president with his US counterpart Barack Obama, billed as an informal get-together at a private ranch in California where neckties will be off and shirtsleeves rolled up, for exchanges that will put progress first and protocol last. Almost certainly the topics Obama raises will include alleged Chinese hacking of US companies and official communications, while Xi will riposte vigorously on the same theme about alleged US hacking of Chinese companies and official communications.

No doubt Obama's evidence will include photographs of the exterior of that multistorey building in Shanghai now so familiar to TV screens across the globe; a building that is supposedly a beehive of hacking activities. But Xi will certainly ask to be shown pictures of the hackers at work and other proof of their hacking, because - as Beijing has strenuously stressed - China is innocent.

However, when it comes to his turn to complain about massive hacking of China's secrets, Xi will hold a far stronger hand because he will be armed with a dossier of incriminating evidence against the US. Let's start with Stuxnet, a computer worm created by the US and Israel to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran. Stuxnet has a sophisticated malware payload that targets Siemens industrial software, spying on and subverting it. And, yes, Iran used Siemens equipment for its nuclear enrichment program, which was totally compromised by Stuxnet's attacks.

Xi may also remind Obama that Gary Samore, the White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control, boasted in May 2011: "We're glad they (the Iranians) are having trouble with their centrifuge machine and that we - the US and its allies - are doing everything we can to make sure that we complicate matters for them."

The WikiLeaks scandal very likely will give the visitor another offensive opportunity as it concerns some of the most senior US diplomats, whose unflattering views of certain world leaders - including close allies of Washington - were about to be made public.

Xi will no doubt also point out that the "mole" who passed on this monumentally damaging dossier of no fewer than 250,000 highly confidential diplomatic messages was Private First Class Bradley Manning - undoubtedly the lowest-ranking informer ever known to expose the biggest diplomatic disaster in history.

And the new Chinese leader, who rarely misses an opportunity to proclaim China's peaceful intentions, is sure to question his counterpart about the US's coming military pivot from such places as the Middle East to Northeast Asia, or more specifically, to the profusion of US bases in Australia, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

In the circumstances it is probably just as well Obama will have his tie off and shirtfront unbuttoned otherwise he would be hot under the collar with embarrassment!

Moving on, the bigger picture about this meeting between the two presidents is that it will provide a much firmer foundation for Sino-US relations in the future. As Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said: "The meeting will be of great significance to strengthening strategic communication, increasing mutual trust, properly handling disputes, developing cooperative relations and building a new type of big power relationship."

The White House announcement said the two leaders would "discuss ways to enhance cooperation while constructively managing our differences in the years ahead."

On the face of it, such pronouncements in different languages appeared to be aiming for the same positive objectives. Coming from the world's two leading powers, we all may be justified in feeling somewhat encouraged about Sino-US relations at least in the near term.

The author is vice-chairman and secretary-general of the China Energy Fund Committee, a think tank on energy and China-related issues.

(HK Edition 05/30/2013 page1)