BEIJING - Chinese leaders, eager to improve relations with the United States ahead of the visit this month by President Hu Jintao, have dispatched a large delegation of business and economic officials both to display China's buying power and to cool protectionist sentiment in Congress, Chinese officials said Wednesday.
The buying mission, the largest China has assembled since re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States in late 1979, reflects Beijing's view that it may be easier for it to try to lower economic tensions than to satisfy some other U.S. demands, such as doing more to help curtail nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and reducing human rights abuses at home.
More than 100 business executives joined Wu Yi, China's vice premier and economic troubleshooter, on a tour that began Tuesday in Hawaii and is scheduled to cover 13 states. The trip is expected to result in multibillion-dollar orders for Boeing aircraft, auto parts, computer software, telecommunications equipment, grain, cotton, soybeans and other products, Chinese officials and state media reports said.
China has practiced such checkbook diplomacy before, notably during the prolonged fight to win U.S. support for its entry into the World Trade Organization in the late 1990s.
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