Jiang sets off for final U.S. tour

Staff and wires

Billboards have gone up across China portraying Jiang alongside former revolutionary leaders as part of a legacy-building propaganda blitz

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BEIJING, China -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin has set off on his last official tour of the U.S. against the background of unprecedented growth in bilateral trade and investments.

Economic relations and the anti-terrorist campaign are set to dominate the 90-minute tete-a-tete between Jiang and President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas on Friday.

In an apparent attempt to boost the atmosphere of the summit, a flurry of business deals were inked between major Chinese and American companies earlier this week.

Telecoms giant China Telecom is shelling out more than $1 billion in various deals with Motorola, Lucent, Nortel and Ericsson. China's No. 2 mobile operator will use newly acquired equipment to upgrade its CDMA standard mobile network.

Anheuser-Busch is increasing its stake in China's Tsingtao Brewery to 27% over seven years.(Full story)

And oil giants Exxon-Mobil and Sinopec have agreed to further strengthen their strategic alliance.(Full story)

These deals, timed just before the summit, seem to be aimed at easing U-S concerns over its growing trade deficit with China which hit an all time monthly high in August.

According to Chinese figures, two-way trade should hit $92 billion this year, an increase of a whopping $10 billion over 2001.

Economists at Beijing's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation indicated the U.S. could overtake Japan as China's largest trading partner by the year 2005.

Security

On the security front, the two leaders will likely focus on Iraq and North Korea.

Diplomatic analysts say Bush will try to ensure that Beijing will at least acquiesce in a possible American war against Iraq.

Washington will also try to impress upon the Jiang team the imperative of putting pressure on Pyongyang to stop its nuclear development program.

International affairs expert Professor Feng Changhong told the Chinese media both sides could reach agreements on an advance-warning system to prevent military and quasi-military crises.

Both militaries have indicated an interest in resuming regular security dialogues in areas including substantiating confidence-building measures.

Analysts said in return for publishing new and harsher regulations governing the export of military material and know-how, the Chinese team is hopeful the U.S. would at least selectively relax its 13-year-old ban on the transfer of certain types of high technology to China.

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