U.S. Vice President Joe Biden leaves Washington Tuesday on an overseas trip that will take him first to China and then to Mongolia and Japan.

Biden’s talks in Beijing with his Chinese counterpart, Vice President Xi Jinping, will focus on the economy. They are expected to discuss China’s concern about the U.S. deficit and Washington’s call for China’s currency to be revalued.

China, with the world’s second largest economy, is the biggest foreign creditor of the United States. Chinese officials have expressed concern about the recent deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, saying it did not got far enough.

But the Obama administration has stressed that China has its own economic problems, which include an aging work force and the need to move away from an export-driven economy.

The United States has long pressed China to allow its currency, the yuan, to rise in value against the dollar, arguing that it remains significantly undervalued.

Following his four-day visit to China, which also will include talks about human rights, Taiwan and Tibet, Biden will head to Mongolia, becoming the first U.S. vice president to travel there since 1944.

His stop in Japan begins in Tokyo for meetings with Japanese leaders, followed by a visit to the earthquake- and tsunami-devastated city of Sendai.