The book, a favourite gift in diplomatic encounters, has supplied generations of politicians and writers with a garnish of profundity, through its insights such as “winning without fighting is the best strategy”.

But aside from that volume of oblique provocation, Hu’s visit is not trite. It comes when China is beginning to exert real influence on world conflicts.

If Hu and Bush can sidestep the dispute over trade, which parts of the US Congress are determined to inflame — and don’t open a new battlefront over energy — they could establish important common ground on Iran and North Korea.

That was certainly the message Hu wanted to give as he prepared to leave Seattle for Washington. “We share broad common interests, have a solid foundation for co-operation and shoulder joint responsibility for promoting world peace and development,” he said.

He said he hoped to have “extensive contacts” with the American people to “enhance mutual understanding”. With good reason; the passion of the China-bashing block on Capitol Hill has a diffuse but powerful echo in public opinion.

Hu’s schedule reflects an alertness to public relations that past trips have often lacked. His visit yesterday to the Boeing aircraft manufacturer’s Everett plant was presumably designed to remind US critics that China does buy something in return for the $243 billion (£135 billion) of goods it sells to the US. This month China bought 80 Boeing aircraft worth $4.6 billion, as part of a $16.2 billion buying spree in the run-up to Hu’s visit.

Trade will no doubt dominate talks today. US officials are looking for a loud promise that China will stick to the commitments it made when it joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, particularly on intellectual property rights.

The White House has taken an aggrieved but less confrontational tone than Congress, where several senators have chosen to make the battle against the “China threat” the defining issue. All the same, in today’s talks Bush can take advantage of the risk to China posed by potential congressional Bills.

Republican senator Lindsay Graham and Democrat Charles Schumer are the sponsors of a Bill to slap 27.5 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports in retaliation for keeping its currency low against the dollar. The vote is scheduled to fall just before the mid-term congressional elections. If it passes, it would present Bush with an awkward decision about whether to veto it.

Human rights are less of a source of tension than they were ten years ago, although Bush may challenge China’s moves to stifle the internet, and its detention of journalists.

But energy has opened up as a new front where US and Chinese interests are so similar that they collide. Hu’s decision to visit Saudi Arabia and Nigeria after the US is part of China’s plan to court oil- producing countries. The inclusion of Kenya and Morocco in the trip — significant regional players but hardly in the top league of diplomatic attention — reflects China’s new interest in building wider alliances.

China and the US have found most common ground in foreign policy in trying to talk North Korea down from its nuclear ambitions. But on Iran, China has started to sound its own voice — and it is not in tune with US interests. Six months ago British and US officials saw Russia as their greatest obstacle in marshalling a common front against Iran, given its contract to build Iran’s first nuclear reactor. But China, which has signed big energy deals with Tehran, has proved even more difficult to persuade — and has argued its views more loudly than its past reticence would have suggested.

Bush may ask for China’s help on this front today in return for taking a more muted tone in the trade wars, officials suggest. That would help to show whether China is open to a bargain on the new fronts where its interests are at odds with America’s.

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