U.S. President Barack Obama (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping having a summit at the Great Hall of People in Beijing during APEC Summit held in November 2014. The China-U.S. tensions are expected to be thick on the upcoming Obama-Xi summit in Washington in September./ Source from Xinhua News Agency

1

By Hong Soon-do, Beijing correspondent, AsiaToday - It seems clear that the China-U.S. relationship, already strained over numerous issues including South China Sea's territorial dispute, will be getting worse. Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to visit the U.S. in September and have a summit meeting with President Barack Obama in order to reduce tensions between the two countries. However, things aren't going well.

On August 5, the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper under the People's Daily, reported that such outlook is closely related to the case of former director of the Communist Party's General Office Ling Jinhua's younger brother Ling Wancheng, who fled to the United States last year while going through investigation for his brother's corruption case. The China-US tensions are intensifying as the U.S. had yet to agree to China's demand for Ling Wancheng's repatriation. The tensions are expected to rise further as Wancheng is thought to possess interesting information about high-ranking officials of the China's ruling party that would be useful intelligence to the US.

Another stress factor to the China-U.S. relationship is that the U.S. government investigators have recently put Wang Qishan, who serves as Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, on the top of the list in the subpoena in connection with their probe of J.P. Morgan's hiring of relatives and associates of Chinese government officials. While China feels very unpleasant seeing its inspection agency head undergoing an investigation in the U.S. for corruption charges, the U.S. is determined to investigate the corruption case.

Not only that, China's President Xi Jinping will likely urge U.S. to respect 'core interests' based on a concept of "new type of great power relations" at his U.S. visit in September, which could add tension between the two countries. China hopes to take care of its own concern as a superpower at least in Asian regions while the U.S. hopes to take an active role in Asia affairs with its "pivot to Asia" strategy.

Tensions between China and the US are nothing new, but they have escalated recently. This is why experts forecast that Xi's US visit in September won't do much to solve issues between the two countries.