Thursday January 20, 2011

FACTBOX - Five facts Hu should know about Chicago

REUTERS - China's President Hu Jintao is set to visit Chicago on Thursday, the only U.S. city he'll visit outside of Washington. Here are five facts about the City of

Big Shoulders that may have helped attract him, business and cultural leaders say.

The Willis Tower is shown in this aerial view of Chicago July 6, 2006. (REUTERS/Jason Reed/Files)

OBAMA'S HOMETOWN: Nothing signals goodwill better than a visit to a sitting U.S. president's hometown, says Dali Yang, political science professor at University of Chicago and head of its Confucius Institute. Chinese President Jiang Zemin similarly visited George W. Bush's ranch in Texas in 2002.

NI HAO, CHICAGO: Chicago's public schools have the biggest grade-school program teaching Mandarin Chinese in the United States.

DALEY SHOW: Mayor Richard M. Daley, who leaves office this year after more than two decades in power, has been a major force in promoting better relations between China and Chicago.

MIDWEST TRADE: Chicago is the financial center of the Midwest, which has many of the products China buys. China bought more than half the soybeans exported by the United States last year. The Asian giant also buys cars, steel, construction and farming equipment, and pharmaceuticals.

HEDGING BETS: China's use of CME Group Inc.'s two futures exchanges falls well short of its potential, but that's likely to change if China liberalizes its restrictions on foreign investment, says CME Chairman Emeritus Leo Melamed. "There is business coming from China, but it isn't the ultimate flow of business that can be expected," he said. Notably, China hedges its huge U.S. soybean imports at its home-grown Dalian Futures Exchange, not in Chicago.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir and Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Thursday January 20, 2011

FACTBOX - Five facts Hu should know about Chicago