I said I wasn’t going to talk about Paulson’s visit because it was boring, but I lied. Meet me after the quote, and I’ll explain:

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met yesterday with Chinese officials in hopes of defusing demands in the US Congress for sanctions over currency and trade disputes.

Vice Premier Wu Yi, Paulson’s counterpart in a “strategic economic dialogue” between the two countries, expressed hope that Paulson’s visit this week to one of China’s poorest areas will help him illustrate the country’s true conditions to its critics in Congress.

Paulson started his trip with a stop Monday at Qinghai Lake in China’s remote west to assess the environmental costs of its boom.

“I’m very happy that you’ve seen an area that is, relatively speaking, lagging behind in China so as to obtain a more complete picture of my country,” Wu told Paulson as they began a meeting. [Shanghai Daily]

OK, so Paulson was taken out West to see a poor area. Why? Will seeing poor people, pollution, and generally backward development change his mind or anyone else’s in the Bush Administration about the pace of China’s economic reforms? No, and that’s not the point since Paulson et al is already on China’s side as far as economic reform is concerned.

So here’s my thinking. The only folks who present a real problem to Wu Yi with regard to the bilateral relationship are the Democrats in the U.S. Congress. Dems have been leading the charge on China’s trade surplus, and the ensuing debates have brought in discussions about IP, RMB revaluation, outsourcing, and now food safety. Note that in 2006, the Democrats won back control of the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

So when Paulson goes back to D.C., the key audience for his report is the U.S. Congress, controlled by Democrats. What other issues do Democrats care deeply about? Poverty and the environment are up near the top of the list. Insofar as Wu Yi, and Paulson, can show that China has its hands full tackling these important issues, this could play pretty well to Democrats. Note that the article I got this from was entitled “Paulson Meets Poverty on Fact-finding Journey.” Everyone knows that you don’t try to influence Republicans (the Bush Administration) by appealing to their charitable sentiments; on the other hand, many Democrats actually care about this sort of thing.

All right, this is all fanciful speculation. I am not a government insider on either end, so I’m making this stuff up as I go along. However, since I still haven’t had my morning coffee and therefore my brain is a bit muddled, the argument sounds reasonable to me.