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China's leader Hu Jintao's visit to the US has got commentators talking about China's foreign policy.

The a unique challenge with diplomacy between China and the US:

"The problem for Barack Obama as he welcomes President Hu Jintao to Washington today is not only that China's decision-making process is opaque. No one knows for sure who says what to whom. It is also that it is, in its own terms, successful. Unlike Russia or India, China can do complex things quickly. It can put airports, dams, high-speed rail links and power stations where it wants, often at huge environmental and social cost, to feed its industrial base. It can get a lot of bang for its yuan."

that the days of China as a shrinking violet are behind us but predicts the country is unlikely to be a proselytising power:

"Beijing is not blind to the utility of soft power. Dozens of Confucian Institutes around the world are spreading the Chinese language, and its state media has stepped up efforts to spread a "Chinese view" of the world. But at bottom, China's political system and its pragmatic, mixed economy are not ideologically driven. They are a means to an end, the end being the creation of a rich and strong nation."

The
Economist's Asian View looks in more depth at Confucian Institutes and their offshoot "Confucius Classrooms", over 200 of which are in the US:

"China has been careful not to encourage these language centres to act as overt purveyors of the party's political viewpoints, and little suggests they are doing so. But officials do say that an important goal is to give the world a "correct" understanding of China. An online Confucius Institute, also supported by the Chinese government, includes an article noting the "active" efforts of some unspecified Confucius Institutes in opposing independence for Tibet and Xinjiang, pro-democracy activism and the Falun Gong sect.
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"Promoting Confucianism is not part of their remit. Party officials mainly use Confucius as a Father-Christmas-like symbol of avuncular Chineseness rather than as the proponent of a philosophical outlook. (Mao was more concerned with the philosophy, which he rallied the nation to attack as a legacy of the bad old days.)"

China's economic policy will continue to make a mark on international business:

"China understandably wants to promote its own firms and industries as it emerges as the driver of global economic growth. But its policies protect a class of state-owned and subsidized enterprises that also benefit from preferential bidding, 'junk patents' that reward the first to file rather than the first to invent, and access to foreign technology as the price of doing business there... In the short-run, Beijing's industrial policy means fewer U.S. business opportunities inside China's borders - in the long-run, it could produce favored behemoths poised to compete globally with American firms."

Finally, that President Obama may be surprised at the potential for political reform in China:

"Most westerners will be surprised to learn that China already holds more elections than any other nation in the world. Under the Organic Law of the Village Committees, all of China's approximately 1 million villages - home to some 600 million voters - hold elections every three years for local village committees."

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