Same track?
In Washington, senior Chinese diplomats have long loved to pepper American cultural references across their conversations with US counterparts, quoting everyone from Mark Twain to Martin Luther King. As Vice-President Xi Jinping prepares to head across the Pacific to meet US President Barack Obama in the White House on Valentine's Day, they may be tempted by the malapropisms of Yankees' baseball legend Yogi Berra.
Xi's visit, after all, does seem to be a case of 'deja vu all over again', as Berra would have it.
It is almost exactly 10 years since then vice-president Hu Jintao made the same journey. And while both countries - and their diplomacy - have shifted since, the similarities are striking.
In 2002, Hu arrived in Washington and New York something of an amiable enigma. Given the transition then from the era of Jiang Zemin, Hu's mission was one of limited expectations.
He appeared to stick to a safe script, even as, unusually, he took questions at some events. While he needed to impress, it was always going to be a trip where the avoidance of screaming blunders was more important than striking breakthroughs.
Ditto for Xi. While Hu had to negotiate the minefield of a Washington in the grip of hawkish Republican rule post September 11, Xi will face a US capital in the grip of considerable economic and political uncertainty in a turbulent election year. Many of the policy questions are the same - the trade deficit, yuan devaluation, North Korea - yet they have grown more intense since 2002.
Hu scored a diplomatic coup by being the most senior Chinese leader to visit the Pentagon. It was also a victory for his host, George W.Bush, given his discreet but forceful push to get his reluctant defence chiefs to build a relationship with their Chinese counterparts. It is an effort that remains, at best, a work in progress while the strategic suspicions on both sides have only deepened.
That Xi arrives in the US largely unknown is no surprise, either. Gary Locke, the US ambassador to China, recently noted that Xi was personable but 'it's going to take a while to really understand how he might move forward'.
Speaking privately, senior US officials have long bemoaned their lack of hard intelligence on Politburo manoeuvrings and, significantly, strategic intentions. 'We have a grip on their motivations and problems, but that is about it,' one said recently, comparing the situation to the opaqueness that clouded the Soviet Union's upper leadership right to the end of the cold war. Bush-era officials used to say the same.
Of course, there are differences. When the Obama administration took over, some returning Clinton-era officials were struck by the way the relationship had broadened and grown more complex, with a vast range of US agencies and states routinely involved in Chinese affairs.
After eight years, they also found Chinese officials tougher, blunter and suddenly determined to exploit their newfound clout. That, some note, has not changed. In that regard, they may just find Xi to be a man of his time.
Greg Torode is the Post's chief Asia correspondent. He covered Hu's visit to Washington in 2002.
