China is vital to US efforts to keep peace on the Korean peninsula, deal with the Asian financial crisis and resolve the India-Pakistan nuclear crisis, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said on Sunday. "We should be engaging in China."

Republicans have insisted that Clinton postpone the trip because of recent revelations that Chinese military officials tried to make illegal campaign contributions to the democratic party and may have received rocket technology from an American satellite company headed by a big democratic party donor. "To go to China right now I think would be the wrong message," Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, said on CBS news programme Face The Nation. Shelby said his panel would begin hearings thisweek on the administration's decision to allow the Loral Corp to sign a communications satellite deal with China.