Messaging the Hu-Obama summit
Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 11:10AM Not quite as sexy as a TV ad featuring Yao Ming and Li Kashing - but more predictable - Chinese state media have been helpfully rehearsing Hu Jintao's economic talking points on the eve of his US visit.
A long piece on the economic relationship, first published in People's Daily, says Chinese manufacturers retain as little as a third of the value-added in exported products. As is customary, the article uses the deficit to make an unsubtle pitch for hi-tech "dual-use" exports which the US currently bans: China's hi-tech imports have apparently increased nearly fivefold over the decade to $310 billion, while the US's share has fallen by more than half to 7.5%.
The China Daily also gets on-message over the other great US anxiety, software piracy. Following the launch last week of yet another attempt to compel government agencies to use only authorised software, the National Copyright Administration (NCA) announced it had found a city - Qingdao - that had actually complied.
In another China Daily story the NCA declares that this year it will target online piracy, having discovered that "the internet has become a major battleground" for copyright violation.