China's Hu Jintao visits the U.S.
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WASHINGTON -- President Hu Jintao of China is coming to town this week, and U.S. officials say President Barack Obama will be taking a far more assertive stance as he greets his biggest global economic rival.
On the pomp and ceremony front, the Obama administration appears to be deploying much of the White House's considerable protocol arsenal.
The Chinese president is getting two dinners with Obama: first an intimate meal at the White House tonight, and then a grand state dinner Wednesday. There will also be a lunch at the State Department hosted by Vice President Joe Biden; a joint news conference with Mr. Obama; a joint appearance with the president before U.S. and Chinese business leaders; and chats on Capitol Hill with Democratic and Republican leaders.
But the White House has prepared for the visit in other ways in the past two weeks, dispatching several Cabinet officials to publicly lay down challenges for Mr. Hu.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had a testy series of meetings in Beijing last week, telling reporters beforehand that the United States would counter China's military buildup in the Pacific by stepping up investments in weapons, jet fighters and technology.
Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the United States would grant China more access to high-tech U.S. products and expand trade and investment opportunities in the United States only if China opened its own domestic market to U.S. products. Mr. Geithner said China also needed to take additional steps to allow its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate in value -- an issue a bipartisan group of senators vowed Monday to address with legislation this year.
Then Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized China's human rights record, citing the persecution of the pro-democracy group Charter 08 and the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, the political activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but whose family was blocked from attending the prize ceremony in Oslo last month.
"The longer China represses freedoms," she said, "the longer that Nobel Prize winners' empty chairs in Oslo will remain a symbol of a great nation's unrealized potential and unfulfilled promise."
First Published January 18, 2011 12:00 am
