So exactly why was Chinese President Hu visiting?

I caught some of a Fox News show last night, probably Brit Hume. Anyway, Mort Knodrake, Fred Barnes and someone else whose name I can't recall were having a discussion of Hu's visit and trying to decide whether it was really a state visit since it lacked the requisite dinner and other hoopla usually given to heads of state. Towards the end of the discusion the point was made that China "really hasn't given the U.S. anything" prompting me to wonder what in the world we have that China would need to bargain for. Why should they "give" us anything, unless its the usual meaningless assurances that they will improve their human rights record, or that their massive military buildup doesn't really mean anything, or that they surely didn't mean to run up such a huge trade surplus with the U.S., it just happened.

In fact, it made me question the point of the whole visit. There is nothing the Chinese will do about any of the above concerns, and there are no threats to their continued expansion from the U.S. Trade embargoes? Higher tariffs? They're not going to happen. Too many U.S. corporations are in China's back pocket to make these a possibility. Even if the American populace got exercised enough over, say, human rights violations to demand such things they wouldn't happen. Heck, our own State Department doen't care if U.S. permanent residents are kidnapped off the street by the Chinese government. One brave soul managed to at least attempt to bring up the persecution of Falun Gong during Hu's visit, but it won't do any good. U.S. military actions? I think its safe to say that if China really wants Taiwan, there's not a lot the U.S. could or would do to stop it.

All the Chinese government's despotic and imperialist tendencies were supposed to melt away as U.S. corporations spread capitalism throughout the land, weren't they? Weren't the Chinese people going to demand more freedoms as they become increasingly affluent and exposed to Western values? Wait a minute, they did. It didn't work so well, did it?

Anyway, back to the point, which was why President Hu was here. I think there is one thing the U.S. might do that would put a serious crimp in China's plans, something that really worries Hu. We could be forced to take looney President Ahmadinejad's nuclear ambitions seriously and start a military action against Iran, seriously diminishing China's oil supply. I imagine that Hu has already cautioned Ahmadinejad about provoking this, but if A. really does believe in all this 12th imam apocalyptic stuff it might not do any good. So, I guess the next step for Hu would have been to get some assurances from the U.S. that we will not act precipitously in the matter, probably the real reason for his visit. I wonder what his backup plan is if Iran does stay crazy. Has he been visiting Venezuela and Cuba, too? And Chinese companies do practically own the Panama Canal. Hmmmmm.......