Washington: Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday will try to persuade often hostile U.S. lawmakers that his country is a threat-free engine of growth, after a White House summit sought to narrow rifts between the world's top two economies.
Fresh from dinner banquet toasts with President Barack Obama on Wednesday night, Hu begins day three of his four-day state visit with a trip to Congress, a hotbed of criticism of Beijing's policy of holding down the value of its yuan currency and of its human rights record.
U.S. lawmakers have since 2005 threatened legislation that would punish Chinese goods with duties to offset currency policies that critics say keep China's exports artificially cheap. But they have yet to pass a law.
The visit prompted 84 lawmakers to write to Obama urging him to tell Hu that 'America's patience is near an end and that we can no longer afford to tolerate China's disregard' for pledges it made to join the World Trade Organisation in 2001.
And in a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs debate on China on Wednesday, senior Democrat Howard Berman's comment that 'China is neither an ally nor an enemy' and its rights record 'remains deplorable' counted as a moderate view.
QUALIFIED THUMBS UP
Hu, who heard frank talk from Obama on currency during their summit but kept silent on the issue during a news conference, will continue his courtship of the U.S. business community with a keynote speech at a Washington hotel.
Stiff and often unsmiling in public, Hu may not be a natural salesman for winning over Americans struggling with a sluggish economy and unemployment that remains above nine percent.
So far China has resisted demands for faster appreciation of the yuan, a move that could help lower China's trade surplus with the United States, which Washington puts at $270 billion.
Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said China was willing to resolve the trade imbalance through discussions, adding that the value of the yuan was not to blame, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Chen, part of the Chinese delegation in Washington, called on the Obama administration to drop U.S. restrictions on high-tech exports to China.
"As for the trade imbalance between two countries, it's not a currency issue. The two countries should look at trade barriers and discuss the issue of free trade," Chen said.
A Chinese trade delegation has been sprinkling deals across U.S. states, and Hu's speech to business leaders follows the signing of $45 billion in export deals that seemed aimed at quelling anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States.
Analysts said the deal figure looked impressive, but some agreements may take years to materialise and others were closer to non-binding memorandums of understanding that still require further negotiations.
"Business deals make nice photo opportunities, but six months from now, how many of those deals will have come to fruition?" asked China analyst Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation.
Overall, U.S. analysts gave a qualified thumbs up to the Hu-Obama summit that produced those business deals and agreements to expand contact between their nations' militaries and to tackle the nuclear proliferation threats posed by North Korea and Iran.
"There's a lot that is aspirational here, and the devil will be in the details," said Drew Thompson of the Nixon Center in Washington.
"But in principle, this has been a good summit, with the right symbolism and therefore it is a good signal that the relationship is on track," he said.