No dates have been announced for the planned visit and both sides are still discussing details of the trip, China’s ambassador to Washington told Chinese reporters.
The comments by ambassador Cui Tiankai were reported Monday in the state-run China Daily.
On Friday, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said invitations this year had also been extended to the heads of U.S. allies Japan and South Korea as well as to Indonesia.
The visits are a strategic attempt to increase engagement in Asia — a region where U.S. interests have been increasingly drawn into competing territorial claims and worries about China’s rising military and economic power.