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Hu Jintao and George Bush at the Apec summit in Sydney. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP
Hu Jintao and George Bush at the Apec summit in Sydney. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP
Hu Jintao and George Bush at the Apec summit in Sydney. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP

Bush and Hu in rare face-to-face talks

This article is more than 16 years old

The US president, George Bush, and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, had a rare face-to-face meeting at a summit in Sydney today, discussing sources of mutual tension including scares over Chinese products, trade imbalances and political freedoms.

"He's an easy man to talk to," Mr Bush said after the 90-minute meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit. "I'm very comfortable in my discussions with President Hu."

Mr Hu called the talks "candid and friendly" despite their focus on issues of great sensitivity to Beijing, including recent alerts over tainted food and poisonous toys made in China.

Yesterday, the US firm Mattel announced its third major recall of Chinese-made goods in a month, calling back 750,000 toys over concerns they used paint containing too much lead.

Similar scares have hit some Chinese food exports, while in May reports about tainted Chinese-made toothpaste caused serious concern in the US.

The Chinese president "was quite articulate about product safety and I appreciated his comments", Mr Bush said after their talks, declining to say more.

At a subsequent press conference with the Australian prime minister, John Howard, who was hosting the talks, Mr Hu said China was taking the issue seriously.

Beijing was "willing and ready to work together with the international community to step up cooperation in quality inspections and examinations", he said.

The two leaders also discussed US concerns over the lack of religious and individual freedoms in China, Mr Bush said, adding that Mr Hu had invited him to attend the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and that he was "anxious to accept".

Mr Hu also asked the US leader for help in curbing any Taiwanese moves towards independence, saying the next two years were a "highly dangerous period", according to a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman.

Taiwan has enjoyed de facto independence since separating from China in 1949 when nationalist forces fled to the island following their defeat by the communists. Beijing, however, has repeatedly threatened a military response if Taiwan formally declares independence. The US is involved as Taiwan's main protector and weapons supplier.

While relations between Washington and Beijing are officially cordial, there are other areas of contention, notably America's worries about its massive balance of trade deficit with China.

Earlier this week there were also reports that Chinese hackers, some of them linked to the military, had gained access to Pentagon computers.

Ahead of his meeting with Mr Hu, the US president said he planned to raise trade issues, particularly Washington's keenness for China to float its currency, the yuan, something Mr Bush said would be "helpful in terms of adjusting trade balances".

The Chinese currency, which is pegged at a fixed rate to the dollar, is widely seen as being greatly underpriced despite two moves by Beijing to revalue it since 2005. American manufacturers complain bitterly that this makes Chinese imports unfairly cheap and US products in China more expensive.

Mr Bush and Mr Hu are the central figures at the Apec summit, an annual event for the 21-member grouping of nations from the Asia-Pacific and Americas.

Both have also been the focus of protests by local demonstrators, not that either leader would have seen the marches except on television.

Today, several hundred people marched through Sydney to protest at China's poor human rights record. Like other demonstrators, they were kept some distance from the Apec summit site, which is sealed off from the rest of the city by a three-mile security barrier nearly three metres high, nicknamed the "rabble-proof fence".

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