U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, visiting China as a dispute over a new Chinese air defence zone rattles nerves around the region, said on Wednesday that relations between Washington and Beijing had to be based on trust.

Beijing’s decision to declare an air defence identification zone in an area that includes disputed islands has triggered protests from the United States, Japan and South Korea and dominated Biden’s talks in Tokyo on Tuesday.


The United States has made clear it will stand by treaty obligations that require it to defend the Japanese-controlled islands, but it is also reluctant to get dragged into any military clash between rivals Japan and China.

Biden told Chinese President Xi Jinping he believed Xi was a candid and constructive person.

“In developing this new relationship, both qualities are sorely needed,” Biden said during a meeting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

“Candor generates trust. Trust is the basis on which real change, constructive change, is made.”

Xi said the international situation and regional landscape were “undergoing profound and complex changes”.

“Regional issues keep cropping up and there are more pronounced global challenges such as climate change and energy security. The world is not tranquil,” he added.

Neither made any mention of the air defence zone in remarks before reporters. Biden flies to Seoul on Thursday.

As Biden arrived, the official English-language China Daily said in a strongly worded editorial that he “should not expect any substantial headway if he comes simply to repeat his government’s previous erroneous and one-sided remarks”.

“If the U.S. is truly committed to lowering tensions in the region, it must first stop acquiescing to Tokyo’s dangerous brinkmanship. It must stop emboldening belligerent Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to constantly push the envelope of Japan’s encroachments and provocations.”

Under the zone’s rules, all aircraft have to report flight plans to Chinese authorities, maintain radio contact and reply promptly to identification inquiries.

U.S., Japanese and South Korean military aircraft have breached the zone without informing Beijing since it was announced on Nov. 23.

The success of the spacecraft, scheduled to orbit Mars by next September, would carry India into a small club of nations including the United States, Europe, and Russia, whose probes have orbited or landed on Mars.

India's first mission to Mars left Earth's orbit in the early hours of Sunday, clearing a critical hurdle in its journey to the red planet and overtaking the recent efforts of rival Asian giant China.

The success of the spacecraft, scheduled to orbit Mars by next September, would carry India into a small club of nations including the United States, Europe, and Russia, whose probes have orbited or landed on Mars.

India's venture, called Mangalyaan, faces further hurdles still on its journey to Mars. Fewer than half of missions to the planet succeed.

"While Mangalyaan takes 1.2 billion dreams to Mars, we wish you sweet dreams!" India's space agency said in a tweet soon after the event, referring to the citizens of the world's second-most populous country.

China's Mars probe rode piggyback on a Russian spacecraft that failed to leave Earth's orbit in November 2011. The spacecraft disintegrated in the atmosphere and its fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean last year.

India's mission showcases the country's cheap technology,  encouraging hopes it could capture more of the $304-billion global space market, which includes launching satellites for other countries, analysts say.

"Given its cost-effective technology, India is attractive," said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, an expert on space security at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank in Delhi.

India's low-cost Mars mission has a price tag of 4.5 billion rupees ($73 million), just over a tenth of the cost of NASA's latest mission there, which launched on Nov. 18.

Homegrown companies -- including India's largest infrastructure group Larsen & Toubro, one of its biggest conglomerates, Godrej & Boyce, state-owned aircraft maker Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and Walchand Nagar Industries -- made more than two-thirds of the parts for both the probe and the rocket that launched it on November 5.

India's probe completed six orbits around Earth before Sunday's "slingshot", which took it into a path around the sun to carry it towards Mars. The slingshot requires precise calculations to eliminate the risk of missing the new orbit.