China on high alert for arrival of world leaders

Apec Summit: Chinese officials emphasise the economic agenda, while heads of state hammer out the draft of a joint statement on terrorism

The Chinese deployed 10,000 police and military personnel while fighter jets patrolled closed airspace over Shanghai as the city prepared to receive the American President and 20 other heads of state for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum today – the largest gathering of international leadersin China.

Even without a global crisis, the Chinese government would have gone to extraordinary lengths to guarantee a problem-free summit. Navy gunboats patrol the Huangpu river and the tunnel underneath is closed to unauthorised personnel.

For the 13 million citizens of Shanghai, China's most populous city, the Apec meeting is a major frustration. "Ordinary people don't care about Apec," said Zhang Jianguo, a writer. "The people just hate the hassles – so many roads are blocked, and the migrant workers who usually clear rubbish and hawk vegetables have been rounded up in police trucks."

The real or imagined threat of terrorist retaliation for American strikes against Afghanistan has led to an expanded military and police presence in Shanghai.

Chinese embassies worldwide have been refusing visas to applicants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and many Middle Eastern countries. Chinese airlines have blacklisted passengers from 19 mostly Middle Eastern nations, and Shanghai's taxi drivers have been warned not to accept Arab fares.

The Apec summit, under way since Monday but with key meetings this weekend, should comprise another milestone in Communist China's coming of age as a capitalist giant. Wang Yaotian, an econ-omist aged 83, said proudly: "Hosting Apec will increase China's profile and put Shanghai back on the map." Not only can he recall the free-wheeling days of pre-Communist Shanghai, but for the past three decades he has been a leading advocate for Chinese membership of the World Trade Organisation. With the 2008 Olympic Games and WTO membership almost in the bag, a regime obsessed with the symbolism and prestige of hosting events such as Apec can point proudly to economic growth the rest of the world can only dream of, yet Beijing's best-laid plans have been hijacked by ill-fortune.

While Chinese officials have been stressing Apec's economic agenda, the 11 September attacks threaten to dominate. Foreign ministers from the member states, joined yesterday by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, have been hammering out the draft of a joint anti-terrorism statement. The need for sensitivity is obvious, given that the 21 members includeIndonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, and Malaysia.

Mr Bush, aside from his first face-to-face meeting with Jiang Zemin, the Chinese President, is expected to meet President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese Prime Minister, and President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea in the bilateral meetings some observers believe lend Apec its limited but real worth.

Chinese co-operation in the global war on terrorism appears conditional on Western "support and understanding" for Beijing's bloody and widely criticised attempts to resolve its own Islamic terrorist problem.

Beijing believes that dissident groups fighting for independence in Xinjiang, in China's north-west corner, are galvanised by militant strains of Islam seeping over Xinjiang's 5,400km border with eight nations, including Afghanistan. For more than a decade, the native Uyghur people, some eight million strong, have responded with anger and bombing to an influx of Chinese settlers now totalling at least 7.8 million.

The price of a possible pay-off became clearer yesterday when Beijing welcomed a US newspaper report that Washington was considering lifting a ban on sales of military equipment to Chinese security forces.