President Clinton visited Shanghai's stock exchange yesterday, a gleaming new financial institution which underlines the progress of capitalism in communist China.
As he walked across the stock exchange floor, traders burst into applause and an electronic screen flashed a welcome in English and Chinese.
The President, who was presented with a red dealer's vest, briefly sat at a terminal for trading stocks.
The new $150 million Shanghai exchange opened in its new premises in the city's Pudong financial area in December.
Later Mr Clinton sat with young people in an Internet cafe as they called up the World Wide Web - at just over £1 an hour.
Earlier, at a meeting with US business representatives in the Portman Ritz Carlton, Mr Clinton warned that failure by the US Congress to renew China's Most Favoured Nation status would result in a severing of economic ties.
He also said he was disappointed by the failure to make progress on China's entry into the World Trade Organisation during his summit with President Jiang. He blamed China for not dropping trade barriers and opening its economy.
WTO membership for China "can only happen on strong terms, the same terms that other nations of the world abide by," he said. China argues it deserves special concessions as a developing nation.
"China and, indeed, Shanghai face major challenges in advancing economic progress beyond the present point, We all know that," he said.
The US was prepared to help China make the transition from state-owned industry, and develop a new legal and regulatory system, while dealing with environmental problems that cast a haze of pollution over Beijing and other cities.
Today Mr Clinton will visit the scenic mountains of Guilin, and tonight he flies to Hong Kong, where he will end his China visit tomorrow evening.
Reuters reports from Shanghai:
Mrs Hillary Rodham Clinton and the US Secretary of State, Mrs Madeleine Albright, yesterday visited the restored Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai and hailed it as an example of a new respect in China for religious differences.