When planning began in earnest last summer for this week's visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the U.S., Beijing was offered what, to other leaders, might seem tantalizing: the intimacy of a visit to the Bush ranch or Camp David. But the Chinese wanted the pomp of a formal White House welcome. And so they will get it--but with a "social lunch," not the state dinner they had desired. "We haven't had many state dinners," a White House official says, "and we think everything we do is special." Still, in the careful dance of diplomacy, such signals matter. The U.S....
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