Hu's Coming To Lunch

When planning began in earnest last summer for this week's visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the U.S., Beijing was offered what, to other leaders, might seem tantalizing: the intimacy of a visit to the Bush ranch or Camp David. But the Chinese wanted the pomp of a formal White House welcome. And so they will get it--but with a "social lunch," not the state dinner they had desired. "We haven't had many state dinners," a White House official says, "and we think everything we do is special." Still, in the careful dance of diplomacy, such signals matter. The U.S. has an "aspiration to improve relations," says Michael Green, former National Security Council director for Asia and now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "[But] we also don't want to give China a free pass."

That caution seems fitting for a relationship that while relatively warm, is being tested by a multitude of tricky issues. Atop Bush's agenda: the swelling U.S. trade deficit with China, which is more than $200 billion a year. Bush is expected to prod Hu to allow China's currency to rise, making U.S. goods cheaper, imports from China more expensive and the trade imbalance less lopsided.

Iran, which said last week that it had mastered uranium enrichment, will also be on the table. China has hinted that it might use its Security Council veto to block possible economic sanctions against Tehran. Green expects "Hu will be under some pressure [from Bush] to signal that China's patience is wearing thin."

For his part, "Hu wants to show a smiling face to the public in the U.S. and say, 'We like you very much,'" says Jin Canrong, an international-relations professor at Beijing's Renmin University, who expects Hu to try to allay concerns about the trade deficit. Toward that end, Beijing sent an advance team to spread the kind of goodwill Americans can take to the bank--a 200-strong delegation led by Vice Premier Wu Yi that has plans to ink contracts for about $16 billion in U.S. goods, including Microsoft software and up to 80 Boeing jets.