Tours Microsoft, has dinner at Bill Gates' home
Wednesday, April 19, 2006; Posted: 4:35 a.m. EDT (08:35 GMT)
Chinese leader Hu Jintao speaks at a dinner Tuesday night at the home of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.
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Bill Gates hosts a dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao (13:53)
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? (CNN) -- China's leader Hu Jintao has arrived on his first visit to the United States since becoming president in 2003, landing in Seattle, Washington, on a four-day trip likely to be used to allay America's trade and currency concerns.
In a statement given to reporters, Hu said U.S.-Chinese relations were enjoying "sound momentum of growth" and the two nations were "shouldering joint responsibility for promoting world peace and development."
During his first stop, Hu toured the campus of software giant Microsoft Corp. and later dined at the $100 million home of its chairman, Bill Gates, the world's richest man.
Gates said in a statement ahead of Hu's arrival that he was encouraged by Chinese efforts to protect intellectual property.
Such efforts "will provide the foundation for continued expansion of the IT industry in China," Gates said.
"We look forward to working with the Chinese government and partner companies in China to create new opportunities for growth."
China expert James McGregor told CNN Wednesday that "time has run out" for Beijing on intellectual property rights abuses, saying support for China in the U.S. Congress was being eroded by this issue.
McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, said a key determinant in the weeks ahead was how rigorously the Chinese government enforced a recent degree that Chinese computer manufacturers would now have to install software at their factories, rather than leaving software to outside retailers who could turn to pirated copies.
On Wednesday Hu will tour the Seattle production plant of aircraft maker Boeing, whose business has boomed on Chinese orders.
The highlight of his visit will be a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday, where Iran and Taiwan are on the agenda, along with a variety of trade and human rights issues.
After talks in Washington, D.C., Hu will go to Yale University to give a speech on China's "peaceful development."
While Taiwan, trade, international security and human rights are seen dominating the talks, the two leaders will have different priorities, with Taiwan at the top of the Chinese agenda, and the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit with China heading Bush's list, according to experts.
Derek Mitchell, senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told CNN Monday that the two countries had "fundamentally different values" that limited the potential areas of cooperation.
Mitchell is one of the primary authors of a new study, China: The Balance Sheet, compiled jointly by CSIS and the Institute for International Economics.
He said Hu would seek to highlight the positive aspects of China's economic engagement with the United States, and said this was reflected in the opening days of Hu's visit being spent with Microsoft and Boeing, two big sellers to the China market.
But Mitchell said Bush would press Hu to take some concrete steps to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China -- now running at more than $200 billion a year -- and to address U.S. complaints that Beijing gets an unfair advantage from keeping its currency undervalued. Intellectual property rights also would be raised.
Taiwan focus
Hu signaled his focus on Taiwan -- which broke away from the mainland during the 1949 civil war -- on Sunday, when he urged its leaders to take part in a fresh round of talks. But at the same time, he called the island's independence advocates a danger to regional peace.
China and Taiwan, should "resume talks on an equal footing as soon as possible," Hu told Lien Chan, a former leader of Taiwan's main opposition Nationalist Party, who has been visiting Beijing.
"Only by opposing and checking Taiwan's independence forces can we eliminate the biggest threat harming the peaceful and stable development of ties across the strait," Hu said during the televised meeting, The Associated Press reported.
Since assuming office in May 2000, Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian has taken the island closer to the independence path than the Nationalist government he unseated. That has provoked the wrath of Beijing, which has frequently threatened to invade if Taiwan declares independence.
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council immediately dismissed Hu's latest overtures, saying he lacked sincerity.
"While Communist China talks about peaceful development across the Strait, it refuses dialogue and consultation, continues its military deployment against Taiwan and threatens peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," the council said in a statement reported by Reuters news agency.
Mitchell told CNN that Taiwan was always on top of the Chinese agenda in visits such as the one Hu was about to make. He said Hu will want the U.S. to ease back in the level of support it gives to Taiwan. While the United States has long acknowledged the "one China" policy, it is pledged to defend Taiwan against hostile action from the mainland.
Mitchell said Hu possibly would also raise China's worsening relations with Japan -- like Taiwan, another close U.S. ally in Asia.
Iran, North Korea
For his part, Bush would want Chinese support for the U.S. position designed to stop the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran -- but in both cases Mitchell said he did not expect much progress.
Iran was an issue that China wanted to keep out of the U.N. Security Council, he said. China did not want to have to vote on sanctions against Iran, because it had its own economic interests in Iran, including oil.
Bush has already said Iran will feature prominently in the talks with Hu.
"I intend of course to bring the subject up of Iranian ambitions to have a nuclear weapon," Bush said at the White House Tuesday. "We'll continue to work diplomatically to get this problem solved."
The U.N. Security Council on March 29 called on Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program and ordered that the U.N.'s nuclear energy watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), report back in 30 days on Iran's compliance with that directive.
This week's visit is Hu's first to the United States since becoming president in 2003. He had planned a trip last September but postponed it after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast.
There are likely to be protests over China's human rights record, particularly from supporters of Taiwan and Tibetan independence and the Falun Gong movement, which is denounced in China as an "evil cult."
Mitchell told CNN that China and the United States held fundamentally different values, and it was likely that Bush would raise U.S. concerns about human rights and religious freedom.
He said while there were many areas of potential cooperation between the countries, there was "enormous frustration" in the United States about what was seen as China's "unhelpful" attitude.
Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
