Hu and Bush will meet in the White House on Thursday in a visit filled as much with pomp as with substance. After a grand welcome on the south lawn replete with a 21-gun salute, Bush and Hu will confer in an hour-long session with a small group of aides on political and strategic matters, followed by a more widely-attended 90-minute session devoted to economic and trade issues, sources say.
Then they will have a formal lunch that will be the ceremonial high point, before Hu leaves for other meetings in the capital. The next day, he will leave for a speech at Yale University, Bush's alma mater.
It will be Hu's first Washington visit as president and Communist Party chieftain, but the fifth time the two have met over the past year.
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