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Branstad already considering visit to China
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's visit to the United States isn't over yet, but Gov. Terry Branstad already is planning an excursion to China.
In a phone call while enroute from the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates in Des Moines to a farm near Maxwell, Branstad said he and Xi talked about the governor making a visit after Xi takes the presidency in 2013.
“I told him I'd like to be the first U.S. governor to meet him when he is president,” Branstad said. “He said that he would like that, and he said maybe they could have a reunion with all the people from Muscatine.”
Xi was first in Muscatine in 1985 when he was a lower-level party official. The city was his first stop Wednesday, where he reconnected with Roger and Sarah Lande and Thomas and Eleanor Dvorchak.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, left, and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad raise their glasses at the beginning of a formal dinner in the rotunda at the Iowa Statehouse, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/The Des Moines Register, Andrea Melendez, Pool)
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