China Trade Team Starts Its Spending
Smoothing the way for President Hu Jintao's upcoming visit to the United States, a 200-strong team of Chinese officials and entrepreneurs has embarked on a tour of U.S. cities to sign deals that they say will bring companies there up to $15 billion in new business.</br></br>Their first purchases, computer software and hardware worth $4.44 billion, were signed Thursday in Los Angeles, according to the Commerce Ministry. The deals to be signed also include grain, telecommunications equipment and Boeing aircraft, a senior Foreign Ministry official said. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, described the total to be contracted only as "a large amount." But Zhou Xianmei, a spokesman for the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, said the scheduled purchases amount to $15 billion.</br></br>The contracts are being signed in part to demonstrate to U.S. businessmen and their representatives in Congress that trade with China can be profitable for the United States even though it resulted in a record $202 billion deficit in 2005. The imbalance, mainly due to flourishing Chinese exports of low-price goods, has generated resentment in Congress and led some Senate and House figures to urge that trade restrictions be imposed.</br></br>The senior official said Hu plans to meet with members of Congress in addition to President Bush and administration officials, seeking to calm growing anxiety among legislators over the trade deficit, China's swift economic growth and its increasing influence in Asia.</br></br>The bunching of the business deals being signed in coming days, the official acknowledged, was designed to sweeten the atmosphere for those talks in Washington on April 20.