Knight Ridder Newspapers

BEIJING – President Bush was heading for home via Mongolia this morning with little to celebrate after a weeklong Asia trip that highlighted tensions with China.

Bush’s scheduled four-hour layover in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator – the first visit to the country by a sitting U.S. president – followed talks in Beijing that failed to resolve differences between the United States and the world’s most populous nation.

Bush prodded Chinese President Hu Jintao to give U.S. companies better access to China’s huge markets, but got no firm commitments for action. He also failed to make any headway on human rights and religious freedom.

“Obviously, this is a long conversation and a long haul,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters traveling with Bush. “It is not a system that is going to change overnight.”

Despite their differences, the two presidents stressed their willingness to work together. Bush said his ability to speak frankly with Hu showed the strength of the U.S.-China relationship.

“China is a big, growing, strong country. And it’s very important for me to maintain a good working relationship with the leadership here. And we’ve got that,” Bush said. “We have frank discussions, and that’s what you want at my level of government.”

With 1.3 billion people and the world’s fastest growing economy, China is an increasingly influential player in world affairs and a major factor in the U.S. economy.

One big source of friction is the huge trade imbalance between the two countries. China is expected to sell the United States about $200 billion more than it buys this year. As part of the effort to increase exports to China, U.S. officials want China to ease currency controls that make American goods more expensive.

“We’ve seen some movement, but not much, in the currency valuation. I explained to them as clearly as I could that the value of the Chinese currency is very important for manufacturers and farmers and workers in the United States,” he told reporters after the talks.

Bush said he also urged Chinese leaders to give U.S. companies easier access to China’s markets and called for a crackdown on counterfeit goods and violations of copyright law.

In a statement to reporters, Hu said he assured Bush that China “is willing to step up its protection for intellectual property rights” and prosecute violators.

In another bit of good news for U.S. manufacturers, China agreed to buy 70 Boeing 737 aircraft.

But Hu showed little interest in Bush’s call for more individual freedom, including religious freedom. China’s state-run media ignored Bush’s Sunday morning visit to a Beijing church.

Hu told reporters that human rights in China should be based on “national conditions” and China’s “historical and cultural heritage.”

Rice said U.S. officials complained “quite vociferously” about a crackdown on dissidents in the weeks before Bush’s visit. She also expressed annoyance that China failed to follow up on a list of human rights cases that U.S. officials raised when Bush and Hu met in New York in September.

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“We’ve certainly not seen the progress that we would expect,” she said. “We’ll have to keep working on it.”

Bush took time out Sunday afternoon for some mountain biking with six members of the Chinese Olympic team. China will host the 2008 Olympics.

“It is clear that I couldn’t make the Chinese Olympic cycling team,” Bush reported.

Bush will wrap up his Asia trip with a speech in Mongolia, a fledgling democracy wedged between China and Russia. The president will also attend a cultural event that will include a performance of Mongolian throat singing, a technique that produces low droning hums and high-pitched flutelike sounds.

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