Word: hu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...With China's President Hu Jintao scheduled to make his first official visit to Washington as head of state on April 20, his nation's love-hate relationship with the U.S. is once again under the spotlight. Much is at stake. After all, the evolution - or lack of it - in the way China's leaders and the country's ordinary people view America will go a long way to determining the course of what is likely to be the 21st century's most important bilateral relationship...
...moment, at least, Sino-American relations are relatively warm. With Hu and U.S. President George W. Bush having already met on five occasions in just three years - including a t?te-?-t?te in Beijing last November - few people expect any groundbreaking initiatives this time around. "Hu wants to show a smiling face to the public in the U.S. and say, 'We like you very much and we will stick to peaceful development,'" says Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Beijing's Renmin University. Jin thinks Hu will not only try to allay U.S. unease over China's rising...
...That's particularly the case for Hu, says Pei, because he has had the least exposure to the outside world of any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. Hu's predecessor Jiang Zemin spent his early years in Shanghai, China's most cosmopolitan city, studied in the Soviet Union and reveled in his trips overseas; he was proud of his ability to recite from memory chunks of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. By contrast, Hu studied only in China and spent much of his career in its remote, impoverished western provinces. Jiang "liked to make jokes" with his foreign hosts, says...
...There was certainly little sign of good humor in the negotiations over protocol that preceded the Washington summit. Months before Hu was due to arrive in the U.S., Beijing's preoccupation with securing a photo-op at the White House had already injected a sour note to the trip. A senior U.S. official says Hu and his entourage were initially offered a visit to Bush's ranch in Texas or an overnight stay at Camp David in the hope that they might establish a rapport in a more casual setting. But Beijing's insistence on a formal reception...
...result of this bickering, says Pei, Bush and Hu will now have only an hour and a half to cover all the issues troubling relations between the two countries - from trade conflicts to Taiwan, from human-rights abuses to the rampant piracy of U.S. goods. "With half the time taken up by translators," adds Pei, "how much of substance can they cram in? These guys are going to be breathless from racing through their talking points...