U.S. President Barack Obama will pay his first visit to China in mid November, the U.S. ambassador to China said on Saturday.

"Much is happening in U.S.-China relations this year. President Obama is going to be visiting in the middle of November," Washington's new China ambassador Jon Huntsman told journalists on Saturday afternoon.

Neither Beijing nor Washington has announced the date for Obama's visit yet, although both countries issued a statement after their presidents' first meeting in London in April, saying Obama will visit China in the second half of this year.

Huntsman, speaking in English and Chinese at his residence in downtown Beijing, characterized the U.S.-China relationship as "the most important in the world."

"By the end of the year, we should be in better shape than ever before between the United States and China," said the 49-year-old Republican, flanked by his wife and three daughters, who also arrived in Beijing Friday night.

Preparing for Obama's visit will be one of the first tasks of Huntsman's new tenure as ambassador.

Huntsman was nominated by Obama to serve as ambassador to China in May and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in early August.

"I am hopeful, confident, that the U.S.-China relationship will be stronger than ever before," he said, stressing both countries anticipate the potential challenges they may face in building a better tomorrow.

Huntsman's China experience started in early 1980s when he worked as a White House staff assistant in the Reagan administration and visited Beijing.

Since then, he had led trade missions to China and adopted a Chinese girl from eastern China's Yangzhou city in 1999. The girl was also present at Huntsman's press meeting on Saturday.

Huntsman had served as U.S. ambassador to Singapore before and was governor of Utah from 2005 until his resignation to serve as an ambassador to China on Aug. 11.

His predecessor, Clark Randt, was the longest-serving U.S. ambassador to China in the thirty years since diplomatic ties were forged in 1979.

As ambassador, Huntsman said the top of his priorities would be "helping lay the foundation for sustainable growth in the region and the global economy."

He called for both nations to "transcend disagreements, difficulties and challenges," and work for "prosperity of our people, peace and security on both sides of Pacific."

The focus of his tenure would be taking the U.S.-China relations to new heights, Huntsman said.

New heights, as ambassador said, specifically referred to U.S.-China joint efforts in climate change, energy, regional security, global economy.

"If we are going to tackle all of those successfully, by definition, we will raise our relationship to new heights. "

(Xinhua News Agency August 22, 2009)