Remarks Prior to Discussions With President Hu Jintao of China in New York City

President Bush. I am pleased to welcome President Hu back to the United States. I've been looking forward to this meeting. We've got a lot to discuss. We will, of course, discuss areas of interest, like economic matters. We will discuss North Korea and Iran. I look forward to a discussion about making sure we work together to deal with a potential pandemic in avian flu.

We'll talk about—I will bring up human rights. Most importantly, I view this visit as an opportunity to continue a dialog in dealing with a very important relationship for the United States and the world.

So I welcome you, Mr. President.

President Hu. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to meet with President Bush in New York. To begin with, I would like to extend, on behalf of the Chinese Government and the Chinese people, our deepest sympathy to the American Government and people for the human loss and property loss inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in the Southern American States.

President Bush. Thank you.

President Hu. May the American people overcome the disaster and rebuild their beautiful homes at an early date.

As things stand now, the China-U.S. relationship, on the whole, has been developing quite well. The two sides have stayed in close touch and communication, and the two sides have also enjoyed effective coordination and cooperation in a wide range of important areas and on a number of important issues, including counterterrorism, nonproliferation, affairs related to the United Nations, Asia-Pacific affairs, as well as boosting global and regional economic growth.

Facts have proven that a sound and steadily growing China-U.S. relationship not only serves the interests of our two peoples but also contributes to peace, stability, and development in the world. Our economic relationship and trade is not only an important component of our bilateral relationship as a whole but also represents a major driving force behind the furtherance of this relationship.

We need to see the fact that mutually beneficially and win-win cooperation is the mainstream of our relationship. At the same time, there's no denial that as our bilateral trade develops so fast and to such a large scale, it is inevitable that we may have some frictions.

What I would like to express here is that China does not pursue a huge trade surplus in its trade with the United States. And we are willing to work with the United States to take effective measures to increase China's import from the United States and work hard to gradually address the trade imbalances in the two-way trade in the further expansion of our trading ties and economic cooperation.

At the same time, China will continue to step up its efforts to protect intellectual properties, and we will certainly enhance our efforts in fighting all kinds of violations in this regard. And we are going to protect the legitimate rights and interests of all international intellectual property rights owners, including those in the United States.

The proper handling of the Taiwan question holds the key to the sound and the steady growth of the China-U.S. relationship. President Bush has, on various occasions, stated his commitment to the "one China" policy, the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques, and opposition to so-called Taiwan independence, which I highly appreciate. I hope that the United States will join the Chinese side in safeguarding peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits and opposing so-called Taiwan independence.

We have always stood for a nuclear-weapon free Korean Peninsula, stood for a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue through dialog, and stood for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia as a whole. We stand ready to step up our communication and cooperation with the United States so that we can facilitate fresh progress in the second session of the fourth round of the six-party talks.

In short, I stand ready to work together with President Bush to comprehensively move forward the constructive and cooperative relationship between our two countries.

I'm sorry for taking too much of your time. [Laughter]

President Bush. That's fine. Thank you.