BEIJING - When Chinese President Hu Jintao visits the United States this week, he may be in for a rough ride. But experts say China's recent gains should help him avoid having to make economic or political concessions.
In Seattle, his first stop, Hu is expected to tour Microsoft and Boeing, whose executives are likely to press him to improve China's protection of intellectual property. Although Beijing recently legislated that all computers made in China must come installed with legitimate operating-system software, the vast majority of software used in China is pirated and brand-name goods are routinely copied.
In Washington, politicians will question Hu about China's trade surplus with the United States, which hit $202 billion last year, a record gap between Washington and a single nation.
Speaking at John Hopkins' Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies last week, President Bush said that his agenda for the summit meeting with Hu would include "fairness of trade" and called on Hu to "make a statement on his currency." Some analysts claim that Beijing has manipulated the yuan to give Chinese exporters a competitive advantage.
Congress members and Yale students are likely to needle Hu about why Beijing is building its military at a rapid clip and about recent human rights cases. Last week, a group of 119 lawmakers called on Bush to advocate for Chinese democracy campaigner Yang Jianli, the president of Boston-based Foundation for China, who was detained in China in 2002.
While Washington has pressured Beijing to improve human rights and the freedom of religion for many years, China's manufacturing impact on American jobs has hit home recently for many workers, said University of Michigan China specialist Kenneth Lieberthal. He added that current American concerns about China "are very serious."
"There is a very strong feeling in the U.S. that China is changing the competitive arena out there," he said.
But even as American concerns about China have reached a new peak, Washington's influence over Beijing has begun to wane, experts said, making Hu unlikely to offer major concessions during his four-day tour.
While maintaining a strong relationship with the U.S. "is still a high priority for Beijing," Washington has "a lot less influence over Chinese leaders than they did five or 10 years ago," said Chu Shulong, director of the Institute of Strategic Studies at Beijing's Qinghua University.
That has been caused by a complex variety of factors, including growing Chinese economic strength and China's acceptance into the World Trade Organization and other international bodies.
"Beijing has achieved the major diplomatic objectives that they had," said
University of Texas political science professor James Galbraith. Compared with previous Chinese state visits, "the U.S. hasn't got a whole lot of leverage," he added.
At the same time, Beijing has been forging closer trade and diplomatic relations with other nations, many of them traditional American allies.
Australia, one of the closest U.S. allies, signed an agreement earlier this month to sell uranium to China for use in its nuclear power plants. In late March, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to build two natural gas pipelines to China within five years.
While China and other nations are increasingly "interdependent," Lieberthal said, "over the past 10 years Beijing has gained a stronger position vis-a-vis the world, and that shows up in a range of Beijing's policies."