WHEN Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made a landmark visit to the United States in 1979, he was seated near the actress Shirley MacLaine.
According to several accounts that Ms MacLaine confirmed this week, she told Deng rhapsodically about a visit to China during the Cultural Revolution. She described meeting a scholar who had been sent to toil in the countryside but spoke glowingly about the joys of manual labour and the terrific opportunity to learn from peasants.
Deng growled: 'He was lying.'
In that blunt spirit, let me offer a quick guide to some of the issues that have been put on the table during President Hu Jintao's state visit to Washington, at a time when Chinese-American relations are deeply strained and likely to get worse. American opinion tends to be divided between panda-huggers ('China is fabulous!') and panda-muggers ('China is evil!'), but the truth lies between this yin and yang.
Trade is at the heart of the tensions, and China is clearly keeping its currency artificially low (and will probably continue to do so) to preserve jobs at home.
This is destabilising the international system - but let's not exaggerate the impact on the US economy. Chinese goods mostly compete with products from Mexico, South Korea and other countries, and China is stealing jobs from those countries more than from the US.
Trade figures also exaggerate China's exports. For example, China assembles iPhones, so their full value counts as Chinese exports. But, in fact, less than 4 per cent of the phone's value is contributed by China, according to a study by the Asian Development Bank Institute. A greater share is contributed by Japan, Germany, South Korea and the US.
Aggressive territorial claims by Beijing are unnerving China's neighbours as well as Washington. My take is that China has a strong historical case in claiming the disputed islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. But China's claims to a chunk of the South China Sea are preposterous, and its belligerence is driving neighbours closer to the US.
There's also a real risk that Chinese harassment of American planes and ships in international waters will spark a conflict by accident. The collision of Chinese and US military aircraft in 2001 led to a crisis that was defused only because then President Jiang Zemin was determined to preserve relations with Washington. If such an incident occurred today, President Hu would probably be unwilling or unable to resolve the crisis.
Human rights are complex. Christians are persecuted less than they were just a few years ago, and the regime gives ordinary people much more freedom to travel and greater individual space than when I lived in China in the 1980s and 1990s.
That said, the Communist Party has been cracking down hard in the last few years on dissidents and ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uighurs. Its imprisonment of the great writer Liu Xiaobo, and its tantrum after he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, damaged China's image.
US President Barack Obama must speak up: How can one Nobel Peace Prize laureate be silent when meeting the man who imprisons the next?
Support for rogue states, such as North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe, makes conflicts and nuclear proliferation more likely.
But, in fairness, China has much less leverage over these countries than Americans assume. And in the last couple of months, it has played a helpful role in both Sudan and North Korea.
Chest-thumping, especially from the military, is poisoning Chinese-American relations. Even Vice-President Xi Jinping, a pragmatist who has been chosen to replace Mr Hu as supreme leader of China, gave a nasty speech in October falsely accusing the US of using germ warfare during the Korean War.
In truth, Mr Xi seems to admire the US - he just sent his only daughter to Harvard University as an undergraduate - but he apparently feels the need to join the nationalist parade.
Mr Obama started out very conciliatory toward China, but Beijing saw that as weakness and walked all over him. Now Mr Obama is tougher, as he must be.
My take is that China is going through a period resembling the Bush era in the US: hawks and hardliners have gained ground in domestic politics, and they scoff at the country's diplomats as wimps. China's Foreign Ministry seems barely a player.
Domestic concerns trump all else, partly because Chinese leaders are nervous about stability and the delicate transition to Mr Xi and his team in two years.
A Chinese poll found public satisfaction is at an 11-year low, and Premier Wen Jiabao upset hardliners with a public call for more pluralism (he was censored).
The upshot is that China-Firsters - Chinese versions of former US vice-president Dick Cheney - have a greater voice. Brace yourself.
By Nicholas D Kristof
NEW YORK TIMES
My take is that China is going through a period resembling the Bush era in the US: hawks and hardliners have gained ground in domestic politics, and they scoff at the country's diplomats as wimps. China's Foreign Ministry seems barely a player.
