In his first meeting with the new president, Xi Jinping, it is vital that the two powers rebuild their relationship

On Friday the new Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the United States president, Barack Obama, will meet for two days of talks at Sunnylands, a private estate near Los Angeles. It will be their first meeting since Xi assumed the presidency. The future fortunes of the world are bound up with the two countries finding a new kind of modus vivendi. It will not be easy.

We are living through an extraordinary shift of power from the United States, which has been long dominant, to China, which many now accept will be the dominant power of the future. As has frequently been observed, such shifts are generally the cause of great instability and have often led to conflict.

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