Vice president begins Asia tour

Vice President Joe Biden begins meetings with Chinese officials who have been raising questions about U.S. economic leadership in the world amid persistent tensions over trade and currency.

The vice president, who landed in Beijing at the start of a three-nation Asia tour, will seek to allay concerns being expressed in China -- the biggest foreign holder of U.S. treasury bonds -- that the deficit deal struck by Congress and the Obama administration earlier this month doesn't go far enough to rein in the nation's long-term debt and that U.S. growth will stall.

In an interview with China's Caijing magazine published this week, Biden said the administration "is deeply committed to maintaining the fundamentals of the U.S. economy" so as to "ensure the safety, liquidity, and value of U.S. Treasury obligations for all of its investors."

A day after Standard & Poor's downgraded U.S. debt to AA+ from AAA, China's official Xinhua News Agency issued a warning: "The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone." In a commentary, Xinhua said "runaway" U.S. debt was "a ticking time bomb."

The economies of the United States and China, the No. 1 and No. 2 largest in the world, are increasingly intertwined. China held $1.17 trillion of U.S. debt in June, according to Treasury Department data, and it relies on exports to the United States to help fuel its economic growth.

While in China, Biden, 68, also will try to establish a relationship with his counterpart, Vice President Xi Jinping, who is likely to succeed President Hu Jintao next year. The two men are scheduled to meet and Xi is hosting a banquet for Biden tonight at the Great Hall of the People.

"Biden will try to get a sense of Xi's style, his priorities, his qualities," said Kenneth Lieberthal, senior fellow and director of the John L. Thornton China Center.