As Xi Visits, China's U.S. Crop Demand a Balm for Tensions

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China last year bought $20 billion, or 14 percent, of record U.S. agricultural exports and it is now the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, while becoming an increasingly important importer of U.S. corn and pork. The farm exports, up from $18.6 billion in 2010, now represent about one fifth of American sales of goods to China and U.S. officials are hoping for a lot more.

Beijing is not only buying food that will go directly to feed its 1.3 billion people but also for feedstuff that is going to the animals raised to meet increasing demand for meat and dairy produce that more Chinese can now afford.

Public policy experts say a wealthier China's increasing reliance on the American farm belt's enormous strengths - bountiful grain, advanced seed technologies and equipment - is likely to be a stabilizing influence on Sino-U.S. relations, which are fraught in a number of areas.

Those include friction over U.S. complaints that the Chinese currency is undervalued, that American manufacturing companies don't have fair access to the Chinese market, and allegations that China is carrying out cyber warfare to steal U.S. secrets. Add in disagreements over human rights in China and Iran's nuclear program, plus Chinese concerns that the U.S. military is meddling in its backyard through a renewed focus on the Asia-Pacific region, and the farm ties provide an important counter weight.

"The more the Chinese come to depend on U.S. agricultural exports, the more that could potentially make a big difference on the geopolitical relationship between the two countries," said William Overholt, a senior research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and author of "Asia, America, and the Transformation of Geopolitics".

"The stronger that tie, the less the chance of some overall explosion happening in some other arena," Overholt said.

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Iowa is central to all this as it produce more soybeans, corn and hogs than any other U.S. state.

Xi will visit an Iowa soybean farm, be feted at a gala dinner sponsored by the state's corn, soybean and pork producers, and meet with Iowa business leaders.