The president will not make a repeat visit to Asia's top power, China however, and ragged Sino-US ties, over the yuan, climate change, security and territorial issues, are sure to loom over his nine-day tour.

In India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, Obama will cement his strategic outreach to Asia, a year after dubbing himself America's "first Pacific President" on his debut regional tour.

His visit will be a clear sign that he sees Asia, with its fast-emerging economies, dynamic populations, vibrant markets and rising strategic clout, as perhaps the most vital global region to American prosperity and security.

From Saturday, the president will spend three days in Mumbai and New Delhi, promoting business ties, remembering victims of terror, addressing India's parliament and attending a state dinner.

Next up is Indonesia, Obama's home for four years as a boy, and a speech partly aimed at Muslims, ahead of the G20 summit in Seoul and the APEC summit in Yokohama, Japan.

Obama's tour is the latest in a flurry of diplomatic missions to Asia by administration heavy hitters, reinvigorating a regional policy aides say was neglected by his predecessor George W. Bush.

The president also led the second US-ASEAN summit in New York in September, which indirectly thrust the United States into territorial disputes between China and its neighbors.

Obama made clear in a speech in Tokyo last year, that Asia was vital to the United States.

"We seek this deeper and broader engagement because we know our collective future depends on it," Obama said.

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor elaborated last week.

"If you look at trend lines in the 21st Century, the rise of Asia ... is one of the defining stories of our time," Rhodes said.

"It's fundamental to the economic prosperity of individual Americans, ... it's fundamental to our security."

Though the Asia outreach has won bipartisan plaudits in Washington, it remains unclear whether it will escape a trend that has seen the soaring aspirations of Obama's foreign policy outweigh its achievements so far.

And the scale of US ambition will be viewed warily in Beijing, where leaders hoped America's power, diminished by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its economic meltdown, meant its influence would wane.

In a veiled message to China, Obama aides have repeatedly stressed he will touch down in November in the region's preeminent democracies, and the administration has toughened its tone towards Beijing in recent months.

Still, Obama will meet Hu Jintao in Seoul, and the leaders will seek to ensure that flaring tensions, over the yuan, trade and regional territorial spats, do not ruin the Chinese president's US visit in January.

Many media commentators see the US reengagement as a reaction to growing uneasiness in East Asia about China's emergence, which has been fueled by territorial spats in the East and South China Seas.

But officials and analysts say that narrative underplays the extent of Obama's ambitions for a region which clearly inspires him.

"This has been a kind of strategic policy of ours," said Obama's top Asia hand, Jeff Bader. "It's not been a reaction to events."

Michael Green, a former top Bush administration Asia specialist, said China's recent behavior -- for instance its recent clash with Japan, had worried regional powers who had seen Beijing as a benign superpower.

"The administration is going to take advantage of that, as it should," he said, adding however that Washington would not push Beijing too far.

"They are also pulling punches, and making sure that they do not create a dangerous spiral with China."

Obama will leave for Asia after an expected drubbing for his Democrats in congressional elections seen a referendum on his presidency. As always in US election season, China was a whipping boy.

Obama, along with many candidates, claimed Beijing's currency policy unfairly helps its economy at the expense of American jobs.

But the administration still seeks to preserve the organizing principle of its China policy which holds that there are sure to be agreements and disagreements, but that frequent dialogue is in the interests of both sides.

"I think that is the only approach that makes any sense," said Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations. "We will see where we can make some progress, and see where we can't."

Washington credits this policy with getting China's agreement on toughened sanctions against Iran's nuclear program, though the policy has not yielded much progress on climate change or yuan revaluation.

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