A day after wooing Seattle's elite with pop-culture jokes and promises of reform, Chinese President Xi Jinping gets down to business on Wednesday, meeting Apple Inc's Tim Cook and other top tech executives, and likely unveiling a massive order for Boeing planes. The Seattle stop is the first leg of a trip to the United States and offers Xi a chance to highlight China's cooperation with US companies before he heads to Washington, where he will contend with the full spectrum of irritants in relations, from tension in the South China Sea to human rights.
In a speech on Tuesday night Xi joked that there was no power struggle in China over an anti-corruption drive. "There is no House of Cards," Xi said, drawing laughter with a reference to the US television drama about merciless political machinations that is also popular in China. Xi also gave a nod to author Ernest Hemingway and past US presidents, and got a standing ovation from his audience of officials and business leaders. Beneath the bonhomie, more serious issues lurk for Xi.
Activity in China's factory sector unexpectedly shrank to a 6-1/2 year low in September, a private survey showed, raising concern about a sharper slowdown in the world's second-largest economy that could spell more turmoil for financial markets and put further pressure on Xi and his government over how to handle the stuttering economy. Meanwhile, a group of 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners called on US President Barack Obama to make a public call for the release of their fellow laureate, Liu Xiaobo, and his wife Liu Xia, during a summit meeting with Xi later this week.
The Chinese leader was due to speak on Wednesday to 30 US and Chinese chief executives, including Apple's Cook, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella from Microsoft Corp and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett. Top executives from Honeywell, Boeing, Cisco Systems, IBM, Starbucks, as well as Chinese firms Alibaba, Lenovo and Baidu , among others, were also set to attend.
Xi was also due to tour the Everett, Washington, factory where Boeing makes aircraft such as the 777 and 787 Dreamliner, and where the plane maker is expected to announce a new Chinese finishing plant for its 737 airliner. Boeing has inked a deal to sell 300 aircraft to Chinese firms, potentially worth tens of billions of dollars, according to a report by the China's official Xinhua news agency. In Beijing on Wednesday, China's ICBC Financial Leasing Co said it had signed an agreement with Boeing to buy 30 737-800 aircraft. Later on Wednesday, Xi will head to the Microsoft campus, where tech executives are set to hold a US-China Internet forum.
On Tuesday, Xi touched on a litany of issues that have seriously frayed US-China ties, promising that China would not manipulate its currency to boost exports, nor engage in cyber theft and that it would speed up the opening of its market. Despite the reassurances, he is likely to be pressed for specifics in his meetings. US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker greeted Xi on Tuesday, offering cooperation and support before saying that the US government and companies have "serious concerns" about "the lack of a level playing field across a range of sectors".
On the cyber issue, a hack of personal data from US government workers emerged as worse than previously thought on Wednesday. Hackers who stole security clearance data on millions of Defense Department and other US government employees got away with about 5.6 million fingerprint records, some 4.5 million more than initially reported, the government said. US officials have privately blamed the breach on Chinese government hackers, but they have avoided saying so publicly.