BEIJING - US President Barack Obama will attend the APEC economic leaders' meeting in China in November, said Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi on Monday, adding that the two countries have already started the preparatory work.

US to pave way for Obama's China visit

Yang made the remarks in talks with Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who is paying her first visit to China since she took office in July, 2013.

Stressing that the China-US relationship has maintained overall stability and made progress with both sides' efforts, Yang said Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Obama agreed in their telephone talk in July to continue to work jointly in building a new model of major country relations between China and the United States.

The two sides have been making steady progress in exchanges and cooperation in economics and trade, counter-terrorism, energy, environment protection and other fields, including Korean Peninsular nuclear issue, Iranian nuclear issue, Middle East, Afghanistan, South Sudan and disease control, he said.

"The current international environment has further highlighted the strategic significance for China and the United States to jointly build a new model of major country relations," Yang told Rice.

He added that China is ready to work with the United States on the presidential consensus, advance bilateral dialogue and cooperation in all fields and make good preparations for President Obama's visit to China.

For her part, Rice said President Obama asked her to travel here "even as there are many other issues on our shared global agenda because of the priority he attached to the US-China relations."

Calling the US-China relationship "very important to the United States," she said having this kind of "high-level, continuing dialogue is helpful to enable us to sustain and deepen the type of productive relations" and the good work is necessary for the interests of the United States, China and the international community.

She said Obama is very much looking forward to his visit in November both for APEC and for the opportunity to have another very important round of bilateral discussions as he views this visit as a milestone in bilateral relations, adding that she will take maximum advantage of the meetings with Chinese leaders and senior officials to advance the preparations to that visit.

Rice is in China from Sunday to Tuesday at the invitation of Yang. Besides talks with Yang, she is scheduled to meet other Chinese leaders on Tuesday.