As Chinese President Hu Jintao concluded his visit to the United States on April 21, Washington's observers scrambled to look for the slightest breakthroughs on trade differences between the two nations.

The Chinese leader didn't announce any new appreciation of the yuan against the U.S. dollar-which some key politicians in Washington would like to see-or make any explosive pronouncements that would immediately assuage concerns about the U.S. trade deficit with China. But something more subtle took place that gave the Chinese leader's first state visit to the United States a significance beyond a "summit of symbols," a phrase coined by The Washington Post to headline the event.

Prior to Hu's Washington tour, Chinese executives cut a swath of business deals across the United States, signing 107 commercial contracts or agreements worth more than $16.2 billion. Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi co-chaired the 17th session of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), which announced specific agreements aimed at reducing trade tensions, such as reopening the Chinese market to U.S. beef. Combined with Hu's U.S. visit, Wu's discussion with the Joint Commission and the business contingent (also spearheaded by Wu) amounted to a three-pronged attack on trade frictions that, on balance, was viewed favorably all the way from the governor's mansion in South Carolina to the White House.

Stopover in South Carolina

"I would say it was a very productive visit, an important visit," South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford said of Wu's stopover there, in an interview with Beijing Review.

In collaboration with Wu's visit, China-based Haier Co. Ltd., a maker of washing machines, refrigerators and other appliances, announced it would boost its employee count from 200 to 1,000 at its Camden, South Carolina facility.

Sanford also delivered a letter to the vice premier that outlined several ways in which South Carolina was prepared to further enhance trade relations with China.

According to the letter, the state would develop a working group to assist Chinese firms and individuals with visa, tax and other matters. It said South Carolina was prepared to develop a joint innovation center that "would make it easier for Chinese products to find markets in the United States." The letter also encouraged a "print media editorial exchange," whereby Wu would place a positive editorial focused on trade in U.S. media and Sanford would do the same in the Chinese media. His interview with Beijing Review appears to have been his first attempt at such an initiative, although his office was still awaiting a response to the letter. Sanford said he hopes to sign an official agreement with the Chinese, adhering to the points in the letter.

Wu's visit appears to have afforded Sanford the opportunity to reach out to China in a state where politicians aren't always so friendly to the nation. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, also a Republican, co-sponsored a bill that threatens to impose a 27.5 percent tax on Chinese imports unless China negotiates an appreciation of the yuan against the U.S. dollar. He has argued that the yuan is artificially low against the dollar, which makes it difficult for American workers to be competitive with Chinese workers producing similar products. A vote on the bill is temporarily delayed in the Senate.

"We have different approaches," Sanford said, referring to the way he and Graham deal with the Chinese.

Sanford, who referred to South Carolina as the "epicenter of textile job loss," said both he and Graham are "after the same end result, which is, moving us away from a one-way street with regards to jobs" moving from South Carolina to China.

But, Sanford said, "The key is to look for some kind of common ground and solve problems."

Joining the fair-trade table

Shortly after Wu visited South Carolina, she was dealmaking in Washington at the JCCT meeting on April 11.

In addition to the agreement she helped forge with the United States on resuming beef imports to China, her delegation announced other measures that touch closer to the heart of trade concerns for U.S. businesses and politicians.

For one, the delegation announced that the Chinese Government has pledged to step up enforcement in combating piracy of films, music and software. As an example, it stated that the government took action against 14 factories producing illegal optical disks. It also said the government issued a notice requiring the pre-loading of legal operating system software on all computers produced or imported in China.

The delegation also announced that all laws and regulations pertaining to trade would be published in a single official journal, called the China Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Gazette, to enhance business transparency and the rule of law.

"There is a whole host of technical and not necessarily flashy changes that are involved with introducing market forces in a way that is going to benefit China and hopefully benefit the rest of the world in these dimensions of facilitating trade," according to a well-placed U.S. source who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Still, some China trade watchers took the glass-half-empty attitude, suggesting certain JCCT announcements were small in substance as well as scale.

"What [the new business journal] does is to create the possibility for businesses to say, 'this is what the law says, this is what happened [to us contrary to the law],'" said Satya Gabriel, associate professor of economics at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and author of Chinese Capitalism and the Modernist Vision. But Gabriel said the journal isn't going to make a difference in enforcement of the laws right away.

Enforcement also will be an issue with piracy, he said, because enforcement happens at a local level. Yet residents in some localities depend on selling pirated software for their livelihood.

"Local leaders have to be on board with this," Gabriel said.

Responsible stakeholding

For what it's worth, however, national leaders in both countries appear to be seeing eye-to-eye, more and more.

A recent report issued by the White House's Council of Economic Advisors said, "The United States will continue to work with China to assist its integration as a responsible stakeholder in the international economy."

Asked if the White House now views China as more of a responsible stakeholder (a term that has become popular with the Bush administration) now after Hu's visit, Beijing Review's source said that on the whole, yes.

"Yes, in so far as President Hu echoed a lot of comments that he and others in the government had been making and acknowledged that what happens in China is no longer just a matter of China," he said, referring to China's acknowledgement that the country does have a large trade surplus, which has an impact on the balance of global trade.

Indeed, in public remarks after meeting with President George W. Bush, Hu said, "China pursues a policy of boosting domestic demand, which means that we'll mainly rely upon domestic demand expansion to further promote the economic growth of the country. We do not pursue excessively high trade surplus."

Bush, meanwhile, dwelled with appreciation on Hu's statement.

"I am heartened by the president's answer because he recognizes that a trade deficit with the United States, as substantial as it is, is unsustainable," Bush said. "I appreciate his statement very much, because the American people--all we want to do is to be treated fairly in the international marketplace."

The United States imported $243.5 billion in commerce from China in 2005, but exported only $41.8 billion in goods and services to the nation, and the trade deficit has been growing, according to the US-China Business Council.

Outside the reach of the White House and its handlers, economists had mixed reactions to Hu & Company's visit to the United States.

"It doesn't seem to me that a lot of major things were addressed," said Ernest Zampelli, professor of economics at Washington D.C.-based Catholic University of America. "I saw the headline in the [Washington] Post that said, Bush and Hu 'Produce Summit of Symbols.' I think that was probably true."

However, Gabriel disagreed with the sentiment.

"There's a tendency to say not much happened," he said. "In fact, a lot happened, but it happened at the business level. That's what drives economic relationships anyway."

(Reporting from Washington)