But Xi’s visit saw China and the United States reach consensus on a number of important issues. They agreed to prioritise shared interests and mutual respect as a means of ushering in an era of win–win cooperation between China and the United States.

Xi’s visit had three main goals: first, to strengthen trust between the two powers through an official visit; second, to familiarise American leaders with the basic political, economic, ideological and diplomatic style of China’s next leader; and, third, to consolidate Sino–US trade relations.

The timing of Xi’s visit coincided with the 40th anniversary of President Nixon’s visit to China and the publication of the Sino–US joint communiqués, which played a critical role in normalising relations between the two states. Upon his arrival, Xi met with a number of former secretaries, including former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright and former secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. Xi also met with many policy makers from the current administration, including President Barack Obama.

His visit laid a good foundation for the positive development of China-US  political and economic relations for at least the next decade. There are two key reasons for this. The first is that the visit successfully delivered the message that China is willing to engage in political communication and economic cooperation with the United States. During meetings with current and former politicians, business people and the media, Xi repeatedly stressed the importance of cooperation and friendship between China and the United States.

This message is necessary to reduce the possibility of future strategic misunderstandings, especially because the United States, as a representative Western capitalist power, has been seen as ideologically prejudiced against China since the Cold War.

It is also timely because China’s rapid economic growth in the past decades has arguably aroused envy and fear in the United States and some European countries, which have been suffering from the consequences of the global financial crisis and the European debt crisis. These anxieties have hardly been assuaged by statements from a growing pool of commentators who predict that China will soon equal the United States in economic power, and will eventually supplant its hegemony.

But this prediction fails to account for the philosophical grounding of Chinese leaders, which indicates that China has neither the intention nor the capacity to challenge America’s hegemony. As Mao Zedong pointed out in the early 1960s, ‘We [China] are a socialist country. We do not invade other countries, not in 100 years or 1000 years’. Mao’s successors have consistently reiterated this principle and repeated many times that China will never seek hegemony. Xi’s visit served as another reminder that China’s and America’s interests are in many ways aligned, and that there is considerable scope for the largest advanced economy and the largest emerging economy in the world to establish a new type of partnership.

Secondly, Xi’s visit helped to further China-US trade and economic relations. In recent years, as part of China’s ‘going out’ strategy, more and more state-owned enterprises and private companies in China have engaged in mergers and acquisitions activities in North America and Europe, with the intention of absorbing Western advanced technologies and management techniques.

After Xi’s visit to the US, hundreds of accompanied Chinese entrepreneurs have now moved closer to possessing an accurate understanding of local policies and the investment environment in America. This deepening of China-US relations will encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in the United States. High-tech, clean energy and manufacturing industries are bound to become new hotbeds of bilateral cooperation in the next few years. The trade orders signed in Iowa and California by Xi’s team also included preferential agricultural policies for American farmers, which have been welcomed and endorsed by the federal government, state governments and the American public.

Admittedly, the 2012 US presidential election campaign saw candidates from both the Democratic and the Republican parties score political points by criticising many of China’s policies, including its exchange rate and trade policies. But, overall, Xi’s visit indicated that the future of China-US relations under his presidency will be shaped by cooperation, despite the intrusion of domestic politics.

Yuhan Zhang is an energy professional in a multinational energy company based in the United States and a former researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Lin Shi is an energy professional in a multinational energy company based in the United States and a former consultant at the World Bank.

This is a translation of an article that originally appeared in FTChinese.com on 16 February 2012.