US President Barack Obama has said he is not seeking to contain China's rise and has called for more balanced trade between the two powers.
Speaking in China, Mr Obama used a town hall-style meeting in Shanghai to champion internet freedom and human rights on the first full day of his first trip to China.
However, he did not mention Tibet or other sensitive issues that could have stoked ire ahead of his talks with senior officials in Beijing.
Barack Obama struck a genial note after days of swipes between the two sides over trade imbalances and the Chinese yuan, which many in Washington say is so under-valued that it is warping the global economy.
'We do not seek to contain China's rise,' he said before taking questions. 'On the contrary, we welcome China as a strong and prosperous and successful member of the community of nations.'
While billed as an opportunity for Mr Obama to reach out to the Chinese public, the meeting bore the markings of a scripted but friendly encounter.
President Obama used the occasion to call for human rights and greater transparency on the internet, which is heavily censored in China.
'These freedoms of expression and worship, of access to information and political participation, we believe are universal rights, they should be available to all people including ethnic and religious minorities,' Mr Obama told the audience.
'I'm a big supporter of not restricting internet use,' he said. 'The more open we are, the more we can communicate and it also draws the world together.'
His comments about the internet were reported on the official Xinhua news agency's Chinese-language translation of the meeting.
Mr Obama's day in Shanghai is a warm-up for his summit with President Hu Jintao in the capital tomorrow, when the contention over trade, currency and economic policies will jostle for attention along with North Korea, Iran and climate change.
President Obama has said he will also raise the sensitive subjects of human rights, and sometimes-tense trade ties and China's currency, seen by US industry as significantly undervalued and stoking unsustainable global economic imbalances.
