Chinese President Xi Jinping is getting a warm welcome from U.S. President Barack Obama this afternoon in Rancho Mirage for their summit and not just because the California desert temperature topped 110 degrees.
In his five years in the White House, Obama has treated the Chinese leadership with guarded respect.
But not everyone in Southern California wants the new, 59-year-old communist leader to be comfortable.
]
A vocal group of Vietnamese Americans stood outside in the heat near the summit
location at the massive Annenberg Estate of Sunnylands, sometimes called the
western Camp David.
They chanted anti-Chinese slogans and waved
signs like, “Stop murdering Vietnamese fisherman,” “Red China back off”
and “No deal with bully.”
Many Vietnamese Americans in
California despise China's aggressive use of its military in the South
China Sea to steal long-held Vietnamese territory.
Pro-Tibet protesters were also present.
Los Angeles television stations reported that Obama's motorcade made a last-minute route change that bypassed the protests.
Under
heavy ground and air security by the U.S. Secret Service, military forces and local police, the two national leaders are expected to
discuss numerous issues including cyber security, industrial pollution
and an annoyance to Beijing: the increased presence of lethal U.S
military forces in Southeast Asia.
Within the communist system, Xi–who has stayed in Iowa and attended a Los Angeles Lakers game in earlier U.S. visits before he assumed control–is considered a relative pro-market and anti-corruption reformer.
The White House issued a press statement late this afternoon that included opening remarks by Obama.
“Our decision to meet so early, I think, signifies the importance of the U.S.-China relationship,” the president told Xi. “It's important not only for the prosperity of our two countries and the security of our two countries, but it's also important for the Asia Pacific region and important for the world.”
The second-term president also said he hopes the summit can help forge “a new model of cooperation.”
Xi replied that he was delighted to be in such as “wonderful” place “of sunshine” like the Palm Springs area.
“Our two countries have a vast convergence of shared interests, from promoting our respective economic growth at home to ensuring the stability of the global economy; from addressing international and regional hotspot issues to dealing with all kinds of global challenges,” he said. “On all these issues, our two countries need to increase exchanges and cooperation.”
Orange County's vibrant,
pro-democracy, Little Saigon region–roughly a 90-minute drive from the summit–contains the world's largest
population of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.