WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has warned that the toughest crackdown in years on Chinese activists threatens to cloud the high-profile state visit by President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng).
Yet the issue of human rights is unlikely to dominate the agenda when Xi is welcomed at the White House on Friday.
China is emerging as an economic and military rival that Washington both competes and cooperates with, so other issues get top billing at the summit table.
U.S. concerns are cybercrime, climate change and China’s island-building in the South China Sea.
Human rights will still get attention.
Since Xi took over in 2013 and became the most powerful Chinese leader in three decades, he’s cracked down on encroachment of what he views as Western-style freedoms in China’s increasingly prosperous and connected society.
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