Mr Hu, visiting the Boeing factory in Seattle yesterday, lowered the shutters to show a side of his personality that Chinese observers had never seen. He accepted a baseball cap with the company logo from an employee and then hugged the surprised worker.

Then Mr Hu said something that his audience enjoyed far more. He told employees of the aircraft maker that China would need to buy 2,000 aircraft during the next 15 years.

On the second day of a four-day visit to the United States, Mr Hu toured three Boeing assembly lines and was briefed on the new Boeing 787 jet under development.

China recently signed a deal with the company to buy 80 737 jets worth about $4 billion (£2.2 billion).

Anticipating pressure from President Bush to take steps to trim his country’s massive trade surplus with the United States, which reached $202 billion last year, Mr Hu predicted a bright future for Boeing in the Chinese market.

In a speech to several hundred Boeing employees at the plant near Seattle, Mr Hu said that his country would need to buy 600 new aircraft during the next five years and 2,000 by 2021 as the Chinese economy continued to race ahead.

“This clearly points to a bright tomorrow for future co-operation between China and Boeing,” he said. For good measure, Mr Hu, who is due to meet Mr Bush in Washington today, noted that the American company had two thirds of the Chinese commercial aviation market.

Mr Hu’s factory visit came at the tail end of a lavish welcome to America for the Chinese President from Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the world’s richest man, at his $100 million (£56 million) lakeside mansion in Seattle.

A dinner at the mansion, officially hosted not by Mr Gates but by the Washington State Governor, Christine Gregoire, was attended by 100 dignitaries including Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks, the world-conquering Seattle coffee chain.

Dinner conversation included a discussion on software piracy. It is thought that Mr Hu reassured Mr Gates about the enforcement of his recent decree that all PCs made in China must have a licensed operating system installed on them before leaving the factory. As a result of the new law, three Chinese computer manufacturers have already ordered more than $400 million of the Windows operating system from Microsoft.

“We’re encouraged by China’s efforts to strengthen intellectual property protection, which will provide the foundation for continued expansion of the IT industry in China,” Mr Gates said.

Mr Hu responded: “China is focused on and has already accomplished much in creating and enforcing laws to protect intellectual property. We take our promises very seriously.”

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