The State Dinner is scheduled for Wednesday night 1-19-11. 3 Chics will post a link to video of state dinner coverage, if available.
President Obama will host the state dinner for China’s President Hu, one denied in 2006 by former President George W. Bush.
Who’s zooming Who… Hu? China is being accused of depreciating it’s currency.
Robert Kapp: How Hu and Obama Can Cleanse Toxic U.S.-China Relations Source: CS Monitor (1-17-11)
[Robert Kapp, former president of the US-China Business Council, heads Robert A. Kapp & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm. He taught Chinese history at Rice University and the University of Washington.]
Heads of foreign government flow through Washington like water, often with little public notice outside the Beltway. Photos of President Obama with President Nicolas Sarkozy or Prime Minister Angela Merkel might not make the nation’s front pages.
A visit by China’s president is a different matter. Hu Jintao arrives in Washington tomorrow, and his every move will be the object of intense scrutiny.
The reasons are obvious: China’s is now the world’s second-biggest economy, after our own. It now generates more atmospheric greenhouse gasses even than the US. Its military is advancing conspicuously in technical sophistication and skill, potentially bumping up against long-held US assumptions and prerogatives in the Pacific. The US and China in 2010 found themselves out of sync, or at loggerheads, on issue after issue, with China adopting a more muscular tone than Americans have been accustomed to.
In fact, the US-China relationship, which the Obama administration regularly calls the most important bilateral relationship on the globe in this century, needs work. The two countries are increasingly wrapped into a security dilemma, in which each side – both at high government levels and at popular levels – sees actions taken by the other as dangerous to its own future, and reacts with countermeasures that simply deepen the other side’s suspicions about its intentions. Strident voices in each nation proclaim the heightened dangers presented by the other. This is especially true in the fragile and hypersensitive military sector, but it is mirrored in the looming tensions on the economic and commercial fronts – in spite of the huge and often mutually beneficial ties linking the American and Chinese economies….
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
Video of VP Biden Welcoming President Hu
http://www.politico.com/largevideobox.html?id=754349832001
Obama and Hu share intimate dinner at White House
By JIM KUHNHENN
The Associated Press
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/obama-and-hu-share-808014.html
WASHINGTON — Eager to soothe tensions, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao shared an unusual and intimate dinner Tuesday night to discuss the strains and common goals that define the complicated relations between the two rival powers.
The private dinner, in the Old Family Dining Room in the White House residence, came amid disputes over China’s currency, trade and human rights policies and a search for cooperation on national security. It preceded a planned pomp-filled gala for Hu on Wednesday night and illustrated Obama’s careful mix of warmth and firmness for the leader of a nation that is at once the largest U.S. competitor and most important potential partner.
Also at the dinner were national security adviser Tom Donilon and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Hu brought along two top Chinese officials. Underscoring the desire for candor, the White House said there were no official note-takers at the dinner and offered no readout of the discussions.
I can’t wait to see what the First Lady is wearing!
tee hee hee! Me either. China loves the pomp and grandeur, and I’m sure FLOTUS and her peeps will deliver.
This visit from Hu is a big f*cking Deal!
Me too, Dannie. I know she will be gorgeous.
News Analysis
China’s Leader Has Message of Harmony, but Limited AgendaBy IAN JOHNSON
Published: January 18, 2011
BEIJING — For the Obama administration, the four-day visit by President Hu Jintao of China may offer a platform to try to make progress on issues troubling their countries: currency, the trade imbalance, human rights and China’s military stance. But Mr. Hu arrives with a comparatively low-key message, intoning his favorite idea: harmony.
Over the past few years, that has become a catchword of his administration, used especially often when Mr. Hu is confronted with thorny situations that elude ready solutions, like domestic social unrest or a rising China’s impact on the outside world. In China, the term is sometimes used ironically as a verb to describe Web sites that suddenly disappear, “harmonized away,” and officially as a goal, a “harmonious society.”
That is also the goal for the difficult relations between the world’s two most powerful nations. In comments given before he left, Mr. Hu emphasized the common interests of the United States and China and “solemnly” pledged peace and cooperation.
“China and the United States have major influence in international affairs and shoulder important responsibilities in upholding world peace and promoting common development,” Mr. Hu said in a written answer to questions posed by journalists from the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/world/asia/19hu.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print