Chinese president to visit White House

Jiang on tour through U.S.

WASHINGTON - As the first U.S.-China summit in Washington in more than a decade opens today, the Clinton administration has seized on China's energy crisis as a key to forging cooperation on a broad range of economic, environmental and security issues.

While energy issues will likely be overshadowed by other themes, including human rights, at a meeting between President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, China's energy and environmental problems have provided a common opening for the United States in several of the most important and seemingly unconnected items on the agenda.

China's explosive economic growth has created skyrocketing demands for oil and electricity and an acute need to clean its air and water, administration officials and independent analysts said. The Chinese are seeking international sources of oil, nuclear power plants and clean-burning factories, supplying leverage for U.S. policymakers and a potential windfall of billons of dollars for U.S. energy companies.

The administration is hoping to capitalize on the energy issue to make progress on four primary objectives: reducing weapons proliferation, especially in the Middle East; curbing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions; cutting the U.S. trade deficit with China through sales in the energy sector; and accelerating U.S. penetration of the opaque Chinese bureaucracy.

AP PHOTO Lobsang Phuntsok, center, of Tibet, walks with other people who are protesting China. They marched through the streets of Colonial Williamsburg yesterday, where Chinese President Jiang Zemin was visiting the Governor's Palace.

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