Chinese President’s Seattle visit to boost tech ties with U.S.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Discussing how U.S. and Chinese experts and businesses can collaborate on nuclear energy, smarter electricity use and other clean technologies is a top agenda item as Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Seattle Tuesday, September 22, almost a year after he and President Barack Obama announced their nations would cooperate to fight climate change, the Associated Press reports.

The three-day visit begins with talks between a handful of U.S. governors and six of their Chinese counterparts over issues that include improving energy efficiency in buildings, modernizing electrical grids and commercializing renewable energy, and the governors are expected to meet privately with Xi later in the day.

U.S.-China cooperation on climate-change has been a warmer and fuzzier point of relations between the superpowers than others recently.

In November 2009, Obama and then-President Hu Jintao formalized a renewable energy partnership, including the establishment of clean-energy research centers focused on electric vehicles, cleaner coal and water energy programs.

Last November, Obama and Xi announced that the countries would work together on climate change, with China announcing it would try to cap its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, or sooner if possible.

Xi is traveling to Seattle on his way to Washington, D.C., for a White House state dinner on Friday. The trip comes at a time when China's economic growth has slowed considerably, and when the Communist nation is overhauling its economy to put more emphasis on consumer spending and less on an exports and often-wasteful investment in factories, real estate and infrastructure such as railways and airports.

Because Washington state relies largely on hydropower and because natural gas is currently cheap, some Washington-based clean-tech firms may sooner find markets and investment in China than they might domestically, he said.

China invested a record $83 billion in renewable energy last year, a record, according to the Frankfurt School's Center for Climate and Sustainable Energy Finance in Germany.