胡锦涛主席访美专题报道

Top Worldwide
Brookings Institution's Huang: U.S.-China Relations


 
China's Yuan Falls After Hu Offers No Measures to Allow Stronger Currency

Bush Urges Chinese Leader to Let Yuan Appreciate; Hu Pledges Cooperation

Japan's Stocks Gain on Expectations Earnings Will Increase; Honda Advances


Bush Urges Hu to Let Yuan Appreciate; Hu Pledges Cooperation
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush urged China's President Hu Jintao to let the yuan appreciate more to help reduce the record U.S. trade deficit with Asia's second- biggest economy.

``We would hope there would be more appreciation in the future,'' Bush said after meeting at the White House with Hu. ``The Chinese government takes the currency issues seriously and so do I.''

Regarding the currency and other trade disagreements, Hu through a translator said the Chinese government ``understands U.S. concerns and will continue to take steps to'' resolve the issues. ```We do not pursue an excessively high trade surpluses'' with the U.S., Hu said.

Currency has been a persistent source of tension between the two nations. China ended its decade-old peg to the dollar last July and said it would allow the yuan, a denomination of the renminbi, to fluctuate as much as 0.3 percent each day against the U.S. currency. Since then, the yuan has gained 1.2 percent.

[April 20, 2006]


U.S. editorial excerpts -3-+

(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)NEW YORK, April 20_(Kyodo) _ Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press:

NO QUESTIONS ASKED (The Washington Post, Washington)

FOR HU JINTAO, the substance of his summit meeting with President Bush today will occur before it ever begins -- with the 21-gun salute the Chinese president will receive on the White House lawn. Broadcast back to China, the reception will be offered by the communist regime as proof that Mr. Bush regards Mr. Hu as a strategic partner in managing global affairs. But there's another signal moment of the day's events, which will occur just after the Bush-Hu talks. Contrary to the standard protocol for visiting heads of state, there will be no news conference at which American and Chinese journalists can ask unscripted questions.



The White House's acquiescence to a Chinese demand that Mr. Hu not be subjected to possibly embarrassing queries about political prisoners, religious freedom or censorship of the Internet symbolizes a major element of Mr. Bush's policy -- his willingness to relegate China's worsening performance on political freedom and human rights to a back burner.

To be sure, in briefings for American journalists and in the president's public remarks, human rights issues will be duly noted. Mr. Bush is said to be particularly moved by China's suppression of religious freedom, both among its 70 million Christians and the Buddhists of Tibet; we're told he's also focused on Beijing's policy of forcibly repatriating refugees from North Korea, in violation of international treaties.

There is much else Mr. Bush could raise with Mr. Hu, including China's employment of some 30,000 censors to control content on the Internet; its status as the world's biggest jailer of journalists, with dozens held for reporting on official corruption, environmental disasters or the need for political reform; its abrogation of an agreement to allow full democracy in Hong Kong; or the recent report of the U.N. rapporteur on torture, which said that torture "remains widespread in China."

Maybe Mr. Bush will mention some of this. But even if he does, we'll never hear Mr. Hu's response, thanks to the administration's exquisite sensitivity to Beijing's aversion to press freedom. With annoying questions excluded, the focus today is likely to be just where Mr. Hu wants it, on his discussion of strategic issues with Mr. Bush; the visual will be his 21-gun salute. Never mind that according to Mr. Bush's doctrine, respect for human rights is directly connected to the ability of states to be strategic partners of the United States. (April 20)

Bush, China's Hu to Hold White House Summit Talks


Hu Jintao


Chinese President Hu Jintao has arrived here in Washington for summit talks with President Bush at the White House, due to begin in a few hours.
The president and Mrs. Laura Bush will formally welcome Mr. Hu and his wife Liu Yongqing to the U.S. capital in a ceremony on the south lawn of the White House before the two leaders begin their talks in the Oval Office on a series of urgent economic and foreign policy issues.

The nuclear dispute with Iran and North Korea is expected to be high on the two leaders' agenda. Foreign policy experts here feel China can play a crucial role in the international negotiations with Tehran and Pyongyang.

Analysts say the attention being given to the Hu-Bush summit reflects the pivotal position China now has on the international stage. Beijing is seen as having a potentially important role in efforts to end the deadly conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, and to pressure the military regime in Burma on human-rights issues.

During their talks the two presidents also will confront a significant economic problem, arising from China's rapid industrial growth and its dominant position among America's trade partners. Washington is pressuring China to revalue its currency and reduce its mammoth trade surplus with the United States -- which was more than $200 billion in 2005.

As he prepared to fly from the U.S. West Coast to Washington Wednesday, President Hu said China wants to make foreign-exchange markets more efficient, but is not yet ready to make a drastic change in the value of its currency the renminbi, or yuan.


Mr. Hu had warm words for U.S.-Chinese trade relations during a tour of a Boeing aircraft plant in Washington state. He said China needs to buy 600 new planes in the next five years, and two thousand aircraft by the year 2020.

The Chinese leader said "this clearly points to a bright tomorrow for future cooperation between China and Boeing."

The two presidents and their wives are attending a formal luncheon for 200 people at the White House today.

On Friday, the Chinese president is scheduled to deliver a major policy speech at Yale, one of the United States' top universities, in the northeastern state of Connecticut.

VOA News

US News


Preview: Hu rebuffs US on China trade ahead of Bush meeting
Apr 20, 2006, 13:30 GMT
printer email RSS Talkback  





Chinese President Hu JinTao applauds the productivity of Boeing employees during a speech at the Everett Washington plant on Wednesday 19 April 2006. Hu's visit to the United States continued on to Washington, D.C. EPA/DAN LEVINE
Washington - President Hu Jintao made it clear just before a high-profile meeting with President George W Bush: China will not be pressured into helping the United States slim its huge trade gap.

Hu's rebuff of US calls to make China's currency more expensive could hardly have surprised Bush, who was hosting Hu for talks and lunch at the White House on Thursday.

Still, the Chinese leader's remark Wednesday was a rare moment of assertiveness on a visit designed to showcase booming commercial ties and minimize public differences over issues such as Iran, North Korea and human rights in China.

Proper protocol also was an issue in the run-up to the communist leader's visit.

While Chinese media have portrayed Hu's trip as a formal state visit, the White House was offering only a 'social lunch' with 200 guests and a Nashville bluegrass band for entertainment.

Britain's royal couple, Prince Charles and Camilla, got a rare black-tie evening gala with Bush last fall, but Hu will not.

In a key gesture of formality, however, he will be greeted with a full 21-gun salute on the White House lawn and will review a military guard of honour.

Business, not politics or protocol, was the theme of the first two days of Hu's stay, which began with visits to Microsoft boss Bill Gates and a Boeing aircraft assembly plant in the Pacific Northwest, thousands of kilometres from Washington.

With US lawmakers increasingly calling for protection against Chinese imports, Hu was eager to show that China also buys US products.

At Boeing, he held out the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in aircraft sales, predicting that China would need 600 new planes in the next five years and possibly a total of 2,000 over 15 years.

That would come on top of 80 Boeing 737 jets worth 5.2 billion dollars that China ordered last week in the run-up to Hu's visit.

Americans' huge appetite for Chinese-made goods boosted China's trade surplus with the US to 200 billion dollars last year.

One dispute is over China's currency, which the US accuses Beijing of keeping artificially low to boost Chinese exports. China has taken limited revaluation steps and the US has pressed for more.

But Hu rejected any hasty moves Wednesday, saying 'China has taken a highly responsible attitude in deciding upon an exchange rate regime suitable to its national conditions.'

Bush, who visited China in November, has said he would push for 'fairness in trade' in his talks with Hu.

But US administration officials have suggested that other points of friction, topped by the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, may overshadow the less contentious trade agenda.

China, which imports about 13 per cent of its booming oil needs from Iran, has co-led opposition in the UN Security Council against sanctions to help prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons - which Iran denies it is seeking.

On Wednesday, Hu stressed the strength of US-Chinese economic ties and portrayed the two countries as partners for 'peace and development' in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

In Washington, however, a House of Representatives hearing produced harsh criticism of China's human rights record on everything from executions and forced labour to surveillance of the internet and religious freedom.

The House panel's chairman, Republican Christopher Smith, called China's human rights situation 'abysmal.'

Hu plans to speak Friday at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, on China's development plans, before travelling on to Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya.

Bush Greets Hu at White House for Talks on Trade, Currency
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- A military honor guard saluted the arrival of China's President Hu Jintao at the White House, where President George W. Bush aims to press him to move faster on reforming China's currency and trade policies.

Hu is in Washington today as Bush is trying to head-off protectionist measures in Congress by persuading the Chinese government to act quicker on easing controls on its currency, cracking down on the theft of intellectual property and expanding human rights. Bush also is concerned about China's growing thirst for energy and cementing Hu's cooperation on foreign policy issues, led by the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program.

The dilemma for Bush is that China is operating on a different timeline, analysts said.

``The Chinese are going to want to stretch it out, and we're going to want to accelerate it,'' said James Lilley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a former U.S. ambassador to China. ``In 2006, China is the big enchilada and this is the most important bilateral relationship in the world.''

Bush's view of China's emerging role in the world has changed since he first ran for the presidency six years ago, when the U.S. was running a trade shortfall with China that was half the size of February's $65.7 billion gap.

Evolving Approach

In May 2000, then-Texas Governor Bush and the presumptive candidate for the Republican presidential nomination challenged President Bill Clinton's view of China as a strategic partner of the U.S., calling it instead a ``competitor'' for influence in Southeast Asia. From a Boeing Co. plant in Everett, Washington, Bush said, ``we must see China clearly, not through the filters of posturing and partisanship.''

While Bush still refers to competition from China, the president has sought to tap its rising influence in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. To do that he is attempting to keep a lid on calls from Democrats and some Republicans to penalize China over the widening trade gap between the two countries.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney asked Bush in a letter earlier this week to urge Hu to improve labor rights by allowing trade unions to develop, calling the treatment of Chinese workers a ``moral outrage'' and a contributor to last year's $202 billion U.S. trade deficit with China.

Yesterday, 12 U.S. House Democrats in a letter urged Bush to pressure Hu to take ``immediate action'' to stop what they said is China's manipulation of its currency to boost exports and its failure to stop the pirating of the intellectual property of American companies.

Currency

Currency has been a persistent source of tension between the two nations. China ended its decade-old peg to the dollar last July and said it would allow the yuan, a denomination of the renminbi, to fluctuate as much as 0.3 percent each day against the U.S. currency. Since then, the yuan has gained 1.2 percent.

Hu said yesterday that China will keep the yuan's value ``basically stable'' as the country continues to transform its foreign exchange rate regime.

``China attaches great importance to the reform of the renminbi exchange rate, which will continue in accordance with its national needs,'' Hu said in Seattle on the second day of his U.S. tour.

Such statements may fall short of what Bush needs to help reassure members of Congress. On April 10, Bush said Hu ``could help the Americans understand the importance of a free-trading world if he were to maybe make a statement on his currency.''

Senators Charles Schumer, a Democrat of New York, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, are threatening legislation to impose tariffs on Chinese imports if Hu's government doesn't act faster on currency.

Energy

Another recurring theme for Bush is the rise of gasoline prices, which he has attributed in part to China's growing demand for crude oil. The competition for energy resources is ``going to remain a serious source of tension'' between the U.S. and China, said Mikkal Herberg, director of the Asian Energy Security program at the National Bureau for Asian Research.

China's energy deals with countries like Sudan and Iran, where U.S. investment is prohibited since they are listed as state sponsors of terrorism, has aggravated some U.S. officials.

Herberg says China invests in these countries since it is playing ``catch up'' in building its energy resource and because, unable to compete with the major U.S. oil companies where they are able to invest, ``those are where the opportunities are.''

During the next 15 years, China's demand for oil is expected to double. By 2020, China will likely import 70 percent of its total oil needs compared with 40 percent today.

On this trip, Hu has delivered what China traditionally does on the eve of trade missions and visits with U.S. presidents: business deals.

Boeing Co., the world's second-largest commercial aircraft maker, plans to sell 120 planes in China this year, matching last year's total, Rob Laird, vice president of China sales said on a conference call April 12.

Yesterday at Boeing, Hu said China since 1972 has bought $37 billion worth of Boeing aircraft and said ``China will need to add another 600 planes to its civil aviation fleet'' in the next five years, adding that demand will soar to 2,000 planes in the next 15 years.

Such an offering ``softens up the Americans' minds,'' said Lilley, who was the U.S. ambassador to China during the administration of Bush's father, George H.W. Bush.



To contact the reporter on this story:
Brendan Murray in Washington at brmurray@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 20, 2006 09:37 EDT

China's Leader Arrives in Capitol After Stop in Seattle


Published: April 20, 2006
SEATTLE, April 19 ― Gamely donning a Boeing baseball cap and mingling enthusiastically with local business executives, President Hu Jintao of China said Wednesday that his nation and the United States "enjoy extensive common interests" and could avoid major problems in their relationship if they "avoid politicizing" the issues that divide them.

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press
A crowd gathered Wednesday at Paine Field in Everett, Wash., to see off President Hu Jintao of China, who is scheduled to see President Bush today.

A four-hour television series and interactive web site by The Times, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the ZDF network of Germany.

nytimes.com/chinarises »
Mr. Hu, on the second day of his first visit to the United States as China's top leader, continued a charm offensive directed mainly at commercial interests and offered an overview of economic relations that broke little new ground but displayed a prodigious memory for statistical data.

In a lunchtime address to 600 local officials and business leaders at a Boeing plant in Everett, Wash., Mr. Hu, only occasionally consulting his notes, recited the number of fixed-line telephone users in China (740 million), the installed capacity of nuclear power plants there (30,000 megawatts), China's export volume in 2005 ($1.4221 trillion) and the number of foreign-invested enterprises that have set up shop there since 1979 (530,000, including 49,000 linked to the United States), as examples of the boundless opportunities the two countries share.

He will meet President Bush at the White House on Thursday. While their talks are likely to cover a variety of topics, including the Iranian nuclear program, religious freedom and energy policy, Mr. Hu on Wednesday mainly took aim at a recent surge of protectionist pressure in Congress and defended the mutual benefits of open trade.

He cited research conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, that he said underscored how trade with China was overwhelmingly beneficial to the United States.

"According to Morgan Stanley, in 2004 alone, high-quality yet inexpensive Chinese goods saved U.S. consumers $100 billion, and trading with China created over four million jobs in the United States," he said. "The fast-growing bilateral business ties have delivered great benefits to our peoples."

Mr. Hu acknowledged that some problems existed in ties between the countries, calling them "hardly avoidable." But unlike the Bush administration, which has laid out concerns about China's military spending, currency policy and quest for oil in considerable detail, Mr. Hu offered mostly oratorical platitudes.

He did not signal that he planned to reach major new accords with Mr. Bush. He stood firm on China's management of its currency, repeating the now standard line that Beijing intends to keep the exchange rate "basically stable," even as he promised to move toward greater flexibility down the road. The Bush administration and Congressional leaders have said the yuan is greatly undervalued and gives China an artificial trade advantage.

"China and the United States are fully capable of settling the problems that have occurred in the course of business growth and keeping their business relations on a sound track," Mr. Hu said.

Earlier in the day, he met a group of Chinese and American former officials and scholars who were convened in Seattle to discuss Chinese-American relations and China's rising power.

Although the participants included former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger; William J. Perry, a former secretary of defense; and many other notables from both countries, Mr. Hu delivered a few remarks about China's "peaceful development" strategy and did not engage in any dialogue, participants said.

At the Boeing lunch, he selected two written questions from a pile submitted by people in the audience, both of which turned out to be gently worded requests for him to expand on his vision for bilateral ties.

Before his lunch speech, Mr. Hu toured the Boeing site in a golf cart, met privately with company executives and visited a mock-up of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a next-generation airplane. China has said it will buy 60 of the new twin-engine, widebody jets, becoming what Boeing calls a "launch customer" for the line of aircraft.

As he did at Microsoft on Tuesday, Mr. Hu turned on the charm when talking about China's enthusiasm for Boeing products. He sounded at times like a Boeing salesman, rattling off statistics about past deliveries and current orders for Boeing planes, the number of Boeing aircraft Chinese airlines now fly, 542, and the amount of money China has spent buying Boeing planes since Richard Nixon's historic visit in 1972, $37 billion.

"Boeing is a household name in China," Mr. Hu said. "When Chinese people fly, it is mostly in a Boeing plane. I'm pleased to say that I came to the United States on a Boeing plane."

Mr. Hu actually arrived in Seattle on Tuesday and flew to Washington on Wednesday from Paine Field, Boeing's private airport. His Air China 747-400 stood on the tarmac outside the Future of Flight museum where he spoke at lunch.

Alan R. Mulally, president of Boeing's commercial aircraft division, introduced Mr. Hu to a group of 5,000 Boeing workers in an event that had the aura of a pep rally. After Mr. Hu made a glowing tribute to Boeing's tradition of innovation, Mr. Mulally said simply, "China rocks."

Leslie Wayne contributed reporting for this article.


More Articles in International »

20/04/2006 - 2:49:14 PM

Bush-Hu meeting focusing on trade, military, human rights

While US president George Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao hoped their discussions inside the White House would cool tensions over a yawning US-China trade gap, demonstrators massed outside today to protest Beijing’s human rights policies.

The talks between Bush and Hu, who was visiting Washington for the first time as China’s leader, were expected to produce little in the way of substance on the trade dispute and no breakthroughs on the major irritant: China’s tightly-controlled currency.

After two days spent wooing American business leaders in Washington state, Hu arrived last night in Washington for the half-day summit for what were expected to be frank discussions about the US' $202bn (

Hu's charm offensive takes no prisoners
Email Print Normal font Large font By Joseph Kahn Seattle
April 21, 2006

Advertisement
AdvertisementGAMELY donning a Boeing baseball cap and mingling enthusiastically with local business executives, Chinese President Hu Jintao says that his nation and the US can avoid major problems in their relationship if they "avoid politicising" the issues that divide them.

Mr Hu, on the second day of his first visit to the US as China's top leader, continued a charm offensive directed mainly at commercial interests and offered an overview of economic relations that broke little new ground but displayed a prodigious memory for statistics.

In a lunchtime address to 600 local officials and business leaders at a Boeing plant, Mr Hu recited the number of fixed-line telephone users in China (740 million), the installed capacity of nuclear power plants there (30,000 megawatts), China's export volume in 2005 ($US1.42 trillion) and the number of foreign-invested enterprises that have set up shop there since 1979 (530,000, including 49,000 linked to the US), as examples of the boundless opportunities the two countries share.

He meets President Bush at the White House overnight.

Mr Hu mainly took aim at a recent surge of protectionist pressure in Congress and defended the mutual benefits of open trade.

He cited research conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, that he said underscored how trade with China was overwhelmingly beneficial to the US.

"According to Morgan Stanley, in 2004 alone, high-quality yet inexpensive Chinese goods saved US consumers $US100 billion, and trading with China created over 4 million jobs in the United States," he said.

Mr Hu acknowledged that some problems existed in ties between the countries, calling them "hardly avoidable". But unlike the Bush Administration, which has laid out concerns about China's military spending, currency policy and quest for oil in considerable detail, Mr Hu offered mostly platitudes.

He repeated the now standard line that Beijing intends to keep the exchange rate "basically stable". The Bush Administration and congressional leaders have said the yuan is greatly undervalued and gives China an artificial trade advantage.

NEW YORK TIMES

China's Leader Makes First White House Visit
Sign In to E-Mail This Print Save

By JOSEPH KAHN and CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: April 20, 2006

WASHINGTON, April 20 ― President Bush and President Hu Jintao of China, meeting for the first time at the White House today, pledged closer cooperation on fighting nuclear proliferation and addressing their massive trade imbalance. But they broke little new ground on a host of disputes that have strained the relationship between the countries in recent years.


President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao during the welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. More Photos »


Photographs: A White House Welcome for Hu



Video: David Sanger on the Visit


Video: Hu Jintao's U.S. Visit




A distraught heckler shouted protests as the Chinese leader began his opening remarks with President Bush at his side, briefly interrupting him.


Chinese President Hu Jintao, his wife Liu Yongqing, President Bush and first lady Laura Bush wave from the Truman Balcony during an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House.

President Bush welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House with pomp and pagentry.


President Hu Jintao arriving late last night in Washington


President Hu Jintao arriving late last night in Washington. More Photos >
The meeting, which required more than a year of intensive diplomacy to arrange and was postponed by Hurricane Katrina, did more to emphasize the long list of tensions between the world's richest country and its fastest-rising rival than it did to offer fresh solutions. The two presidents did not announce any new agreements after their 90-minute meeting in the Oval Office.

A carefully choreographed welcome ceremony for Mr. Hu on the South Lawn was interrupted by an activist of the Falun Gong religious sect who managed to join the event as a reporter for the organization's United States-based newspaper, Epoch Times.

The protester screamed about China's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and partially drowned out Mr. Hu during his opening remarks before security officers managed to remove her from a press podium, leaving Mr. Bush, standing side-by-side with Mr. Hu, visibly angered.

Later, meeting Mr. Hu in the Oval Office, Mr. Bush appeared to exert most of his pressure on China on nuclear proliferation, pressing Mr. Hu to use leverage on North Korean leaders to abandon their nuclear bombs and asking Beijing to join the United States and European countries in imposing United Nations sanctions on Iran if needed to curtail that country's weapons program.

Mr. Bush said he had raised the possibility of the Security Council passing a motion against Iran under chapter seven of the United Nations charter. That would allow action ranging from economic sanctions to military strikes and has been repeatedly rejected by the Chinese as an unnecessary escalation of the Iranian standoff.

Mr. Bush said that a chapter seven motion was "one of the tactics" he had raised with Mr. Hu and that he hoped that Mr. Hu would join him in sending a message that the international community is "concerned about the Iranian ambition."

China has spoken out repeatedly against United Nations sanctions on Iran, and Mr. Hu said little about the matter beyond reiterating the standard Chinese line about encouraging dialogue and seeking a peaceful solution.

"Both sides agreed to continue their effort to seek a peaceful resolution," Mr. Hu said after the meeting.

He also defended China's actions in handling North Korea, its Stalinist neighbor, and studiously avoided taking sides in the matter or criticizing Pyongyang, which has boycotted disarmament talks for months after pledging to dismantle its nuclear weapons last fall.

"The six-party talks have run into some difficulties at the moment," Mr. Hu said. "I hope the parties will be able to further display flexibility, work together and create necessary conditions for the early resumption of talks."

In response to a statement by Mr. Bush that there should be a peaceful resolution of the longstanding question of Taiwan's independence, Mr. Hu said that China would make "every effort" to do so but added that Taiwan was an "inalienable part of the Chinese territory." He said China would "never allow anyone to make China secede from China by any means."Mr. Hu appeared to be more accommodating on economic issues, pledging to stimulate domestic demand in China, reduce reliance on exports to drive growth, and move steadily toward a market-based exchange rate for its currency, the renminbi, to help address American concerns about China's huge bilateral trade surplus with Washington.

But while he sounded accommodating to American demands, he did not reveal any timetable for allowing the currency to appreciate faster, disappointing some administration officials and members of Congress who had hoped to see more assertive action.

The day got off to a rocky start when the heckler interrupted Mr. Hu, shouting at him from a platform where news photographers were covering the event.

The Asian woman shouted in Chinese, but also broke into English, yelling "Stop the torture and killings!" and shouting the name of the Falun Gong, a religious and exercise sect that is outlawed in China. "Falun Dafa is good," she yelled.

Mr. Hu looked at first confused and then hesitated before continuing to speak.

"You're O.K., " Mr. Bush said to him in a low voice, prodding him on.

For at least a minute, the protests punctuated both Mr. Hu's remarks and the gaps in which he fell silent as his words were being translated into English.

Eventually, security officials made their way to the top of the camera stand and led the heckler away as some photographers turned their cameras from the two leaders and pointed them at her.

Chinese authorities consider the Falun Gong a major threat to national security and have outlawed the group. Members of the sect are regularly interned in camps without being tried.

Supporters of the movement also protested Mr. Hu's visit in Washington state on Tuesday, using sound trucks to blast messages into his hotel that accused China's internal security forces of torture, organ harvesting and other atrocities. They also appeared near the headquarters of Microsoft, which hosted Mr. Hu during his visit. He also visited Boeing.

Joseph Kahn reported from Washington for this article and Christine Hauser from New York.

Demonstrators Mass for Bush-Hu Meeting

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON Apr 20, 2006 (AP)― While President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao hoped their discussions inside the White House would cool tensions over a yawning U.S.-China trade gap, demonstrators massed outside Thursday to protest Beijing's human rights policies.

The talks between Bush and Hu, who was visiting the Washington for the first time as China's leader, were expected to produce little in the way of substance on the trade dispute and no breakthroughs on the major irritant China's tightly controlled currency.

After two days spent wooing American business leaders in Washington state, Hu arrived Wednesday night in Washington for the half-day summit for what were expected to be frank discussions about America's $202 billion trade deficit with China, the biggest ever recorded with a single country.

That imbalance has spurred calls in Congress to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese products unless China halts trade practices that critics contend are unfair and have contributed to the loss of nearly 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2001.

The visit attracted high-profile attention both inside and outside the White House gates. The spiritual movement Falun Gong, condemned by the Chinese government as an evil cult, gathered hundreds of demonstrators on street corners near the White House in the early morning. Marchers banged gongs, chanted and waved American and Chinese flags. Banners denounced Hu as a "Chinese dictator" responsible for genocide and other "crimes in Chinese labor camps and prisons."

The Chinese government had its say as well. In a median in front of the Chinese embassy, the Falun Gong protesters that are nearly always there had been replaced by Chinese supporters holding huge red-and-yellow banners offering to "warmly welcome" Hu on his American visit.

There were some obvious signs that the summit was not considered on the U.S. side as a "state visit." Though the Chinese flag flew over Blair House, the official guest quarters for visiting dignitaries across the street from the White House, lamp posts surrounding the compound were bare of the usual pairing of flags from the United States and its guest country.

In addition to trade, Bush was to raise a number of other issues with Hu, including a bid for China's help in dealing with current nuclear standoffs with North Korea and Iran, complaints about China's human rights record and questions over China's growing military strength and whether it poses a threat to Taiwan.

The two sides have even disputed what to call the visit, with the Chinese insisting that it is a "state visit," which was the designation former President Jiang Zemin received in 1997, or an "official visit," the designation the Bush administration is using for Hu's trip.

While Hu was not receiving a black-tie state dinner, he was being greeted by a 21-gun salute on the South Lawn of the White House and a formal lunch for China's first family, with music supplied by a Nashville bluegrass band.

For his part, Hu has carried on a tradition started by Deng Xiaoping on his first visit to the United States in 1979 of courting American business executives in recognition of the fact that the United States is China's biggest overseas market.

Hu had dinner at the home of Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates on Tuesday and on Wednesday he received a warm welcome from employees at Boeing Co.'s massive Everett, Wash., facilities.

Last week, a contingent of more than 200 Chinese trade officials and business executives toured the United States, signing sales contracts for $16.2 billion in American goods, including 80 Boeing jetliners, all in an effort to show that China is trying to bring down the massive trade gap between the two nations.

White House officials said in advance of Thursday's meetings that they did not expect any major announcements on currency or other trade issues, noting that China did make several commitments last week such as requiring that all personal computers sold in China be loaded with legal software and agreeing to drop a ban on imports of U.S. beef.

Some small progress may be made in the area of energy, where China's rapidly growing economy has increased global demand for crude oil, pushing prices higher, and sent China rushing to lock up sources of supply in such questionable areas as Sudan, Burma and Iran.

But without movement on the currency problem, congressional critics are likely to be unimpressed with the results of the meeting.


On the Net:

U.S. Trade Representative: http://www.ustr.gov

CIA's World Factbook site on China: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html


Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.