Chinese President Hu Jintao played the good guest at the opening of his state visit to the United States today and his first meeting with President Barack Obama.

China promised US exporters $45 billion worth of deals, with the piece de resistance a $19 billion deal to buy 200 airliners from Boeing aircraft. Actually, one can argue that this bill came from the frozen food section as it goes back to 2007 and now it has gotten the final government approval. This was an important present for Barack Obama, who realizes that the key to his reelection in 2012 will be the state of the US economy and primarily the unemployment picture. The US president is also trying to repair his image in corporate America and has included business leaders in the delegation that will meet the Chinese president.

Obama could play the perfect host and at most put in some gentle chidings  about the human rights situation in China because the Chinese would have to be irremediably obtuse to ignore the chilly climate in the United States.

The Washington Post chose to publish an op-ed by Yang Jianli who is acting on behalfof the imprisoned Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. Yang advised Obama to remind Hu that during the cultural Revolution in China (1965-1969) Hu's father was denounced by the Communist Party, meaning that anybody can be trampled upon in a country without human rights.

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham are pushing a bill that would equate China's currency manipulations to encourage export led growth as a policy akin to dumping, which would allow the United States to slap tariffs on imports from China. Schumer, a very influential Democratic Senator, has called China's policy "mercantilism", which is the very antithesis of free trade.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who is not always careful with his words, revealingly told an interviewer that he was going back to Washington to meet with Hu: "He is a dictator. He can do a lot of things through the form of government they have. Maybe I shouldn’t have said dictator, but they have a different type of government than we have, and that is an understatement.”

In Foreign Policy magazine, Colum Lynch focused on the Chinese bullying at the UN when that body tried to scrutinize arms sales to disreputable regimes in the Third World.

Both the Wall Street Journaland the New York Times carried lengthy articles that portrayed an American business community increasingly disgruntled over the lack of a level playing field in China, in competing with Chinese firms and due to China's lack of respect for American intellectual property.

China was able to counteract claims of unfair practices made in the past by traditional American industries, such as steel and textile, by invoking the aid of other businessmen in more high tech sectors who dreamed of penetrating the Chinese market and advocated forbearance. Now there is a united front of all sectors of American business.

Finally, there have been many articles commenting on the Chinese military buildup and increasing bullying of US naval vessels by the Chinese Navy.

The overall thrust is two-fold: that the US erred in thinking the Chinese system could be reformed by engagement,  or that engagement was fine when the United States was preoccupied by the Soviet Union, but once the Soviet Union collapsed it was time to be less accommodating.

In his opening remarks, the Chinese leader spoke of the need to clear up mistrust. Anyone reading the press, listening to American politicians, or even to some of Obama's cabinet members, knows that this may prove an understatement.