U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the USA and China pavilions at the World Expo in Shanghai on May 22, meeting the expo's mascot, Haibao, in a matching sea-blue suit as shown in photo at right. During her visit to the expo Clinton met Chinese children and youth at the USA Pavilion and toured the China Pavilion with Shanghai mayor Han Zheng.

Asked how she felt about the USA Pavilion during her tour, Clinton said only that she was "relieved" the project was completed at all, noting that when she assumed her current position US participation in the expo remained unclear due to lack of public funding. Commercial branding of the privately-funded USA Pavilion has received a great deal of negative coverage in the media, in which it has been described as dull and overwhelmingly corporate in flavor.

While in Shanghai Clinton also met with Chinese Communist Party municipal secretary Yu Zhengsheng and visited a Boeing aircraft maintenance facility, highlighting the importance of the US-China trade relationship before heading to Beijing attend the second bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. Clinton's visit to China comes as part of six-day Asian tour also including stops in Japan and Korea.

Photo: Independent. See also: BBC, CNN, Voice of America.