President Barack Obama will host his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, on a state visit on January 19, the United States said, setting the stage for a summit in which North Korea and currency strains are likely to loom large.
The White House said the visit would highlight the importance of expanding cooperation "on bilateral, regional and global issues."
While Beijing and Washington are likely to use the summit to cast their relationship in a friendly light, Obama and Hu will have disagreements to discuss, especially North Korea and China's trade surplus and currency controls.
North Korea, angry at live-fire artillery drills into what it says was its territorial waters last month, shelled a South Korean island, killing four people. It is also accused of sinking a South Korean submarine in March, killing 46 sailors.
North Korea has also triggered regional alarm by claiming fast progress in uranium enrichment, which would give it a second pathway to making nuclear weapons.
China has resisted calls from Washington and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, to criticize and increase pressure on Pyongyang, which relies on Beijing for economic and diplomatic backing. Beijing has instead urged all sides to return to talks.
U.S. complaints that China keeps its yuan currency too cheap, giving it an unfair trade advantage, are also likely to feature.
The U.S. trade deficit with China rose 20 percent in the first 10 months of 2010 and could top $270 billion for the year when final figures are in. That would pass the record of $268 billion set in 2008.
But carefully negotiated summits such as this are more about nurturing understanding than scoring policy breakthroughs, said David Lampton, professor of China studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
"Lately, one of the biggest problems in U.S.-China relations is that each side has had excessive expectations of what the other could conceivably deliver," Lampton wrote in an earlier email response to questions about Hu's trip.
"If this trip can lead the two leaders to have more realistic appreciations of the limits each country faces in dealing with the other, that alone should be counted a successful trip."
China will want the United States to avoid the gaffes that marred his trip to the White House in 2006, when China's national anthem was announced as that of the "Republic of China," Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing considers a breakaway province.
Hu also stood flustered on the White House lawn while a follower of Falun Gong, a spiritual sect banned in China, harangued him for three minutes from the press area.
China called that visit a "state visit," but the U.S. deemed it an official visit, a less prestigious tag. The last visit to the White House by a Chinese leader that both sides called a state one was by Jiang Zemin in 1997.
Hu's visit will include a state dinner in the evening. That will be a symbolic trophy for the Chinese leader, who analysts have said will use the trip to boost his status as he prepares to leave office from late 2012.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Hu was going to Washington in January, but would not confirm the date given by the White House.