Beijing – In a day of polite but tense encounters, President Hu Jintao of China told President Bush on Sunday that he was willing to move more quickly to ease economic differences with the United States, but he gave no ground on increasing political freedoms.
Although American officials described the leaders as more comfortable with each other Sunday than in any previous encounter, Hu made clear, by his words and his government’s actions, that he had no intention of giving in to American pressure.
American officials said none of the human-rights cases on a list Bush gave to Hu in September had been resolved by the time Bush stepped into the Great Hall of the People on Sunday morning.
By afternoon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meeting with reporters, acknowledged that China appeared to have put dissidents under house arrest or detained them in advance of the trip. She said the issue was being raised “quite vociferously with the Chinese government.”
Meeting with reporters in the evening, Bush said his talks had amounted to a “good, frank discussion,” but he seemed unsatisfied. He chose his words about Hu carefully and repeated that the relationship with China was “complex,” though later he added that it is “good, vibrant, strong.”
“China is a trading partner, and we expect the trade with China to be fair,” he said. “We expect our people to be treated fairly here in this important country.”
Bush’s China trip, his third as president, underscored the challenge posed by the country to the “freedom agenda,” the intent to spread democracy, that is the centerpiece of Bush’s second-term foreign policy.
Bush is scheduled to invoke his freedom agenda today during a brief stop in Mongolia, a tiny, poor country of 2.8 million people nestled strategically between China and the former Soviet Union. The U.S. views Mongolia as a newly emerging democracy in a crucial region.
On economic issues in China that are of major concern to American businesses – letting market forces set the value of the undervalued Chinese currency and protecting intellectual property from rampant piracy – Bush made marginal progress. He secured a public statement from Hu that he would “unswervingly press ahead” to ease a $200 billion annual trade surplus that wildly outstrips anything Bush’s father faced with Japan in the late 1980s.
But Hu set no schedule for further currency moves, which are politically unpopular in China because they would make Chinese goods less competitive abroad. An American participant in the meetings said it was clear that “no Chinese leader was going to act immediately under the pressure” of a request from a foreign leader.
Bush attended a service at a state-sanctioned Protestant church near Tiananmen Square, saying afterward, “My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly.”
But religious activists in Beijing complained that dozens of Christians who had wanted to worship alongside Bush had been turned away or detained by Chinese security forces. Christians in Shanghai and several other cities said police had detained people who belong to underground churches to prevent them from staging demonstrations for greater religious freedom during Bush’s visit.
Dozens of political activists, including Bao Tong, a former senior Communist Party official who has become an outspoken critic of one-party rule, and Hu Jia, who has pressed for greater action to combat AIDS, were forbidden to leave their homes or use their telephones while Bush was in Beijing, according to people close to Bao and Hu who said they could not be identified because of possible retaliation by the Chinese government.
After a day of talks that began with a 90-minute meeting inside the Great Hall of the People, Bush emerged with little progress to report beyond a $4 billion deal for China to buy 70 Boeing aircraft. One person with detailed knowledge of the negotiations said the actual contract, including the price tag for each aircraft, was still being discussed. That suggested that the deal had been announced ahead of time to provide an upbeat note for the White House during Bush’s visit.