China's Hu Jintao meets US Congress

Chinese President Hu Jintao begins day three of his four-day state visit to the United States Thursday with a trip to Congress, where he will try to narrow rifts between the world's top two economies.
He will hold separate talks with Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader.
Receiving Hu for a summit and state banquet Wednesday President Barack Obama spoke of differences on human rights between the US and China, but failed to specify issues, or mention imprisoned Nobel Laureate Liu Xiabo.
PIME missionary and editor of AsiaNews agency, Fr Bernardo Cervellera, says “economic constraints have forced the two superpowers to focus on shared interests”, to the detriment of human rights. “The US needs China to buy up America’s foreign debt and China needs the US market to offload its over production of goods”.
Cervellera points to the billion dollar trade deals that have been signed between US and Chinese companies this week and Hu’s assurances that China’s economic growth is of no threat to the US. “Hu has said that Beijing’s major priority is to reduce poverty, he has virtually put material rights, such as access to food, housing etc..ahead of all other rights and Obama went along with him. This is something I cannot agree with”. Listen: