Oct. 24, 2002, 12:02AM Chinese President Jiang Zemin walked through a life-sized model of a space shuttle and dined with Houston's business and political elite during a Wednesday visit choreographed to avoid the protesters who had sought to line his path.

The day culminated with a $500-a-plate dinner for 800 sponsored by the Greater Houston Partnership and the Asia Society, where Jiang gave a 10-minute speech praising Houston's two-decade business links with China.

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The dinner, like the earlier visit to the Johnson Space Center, was held in such a way so Jiang would not hear or see the thousands of protesters who came from around the world.

His motorcade took unusual routes and dropped him off at rear entrances to avoid the placard-carrying critics whose ranks included dissident Chinese, Falun Gong followers, Tibetans protesting China's 50-year occupation of their country and Taiwanese who fear their island may be next.

The protesters are expected to follow Jiang to College Station, where he will speak today at Texas A&M University. He then goes to Crawford Friday for a meeting at President Bush's ranch.

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"I would like Jiang to see the banners, but if he doesn't, it's OK," said Yiyang Xia, 50, a Falun Gong practitioner who waited outside JSC before Jiang's afternoon visit there. "He's definitely aware of them or he wouldn't have to sneak in the back door."

Falun Gong members held by far the largest protest, including some who had protested in Chicago during Jiang's stop there Tuesday. The Chinese government [...] has jailed and tortured thousands of practitioners and killed perhaps hundreds more, according to a U.S. State Department report.

Not content to keep their protests earthbound, practitioners commissioned an airplane to fly over downtown Houston pulling a sign with the message "Falun Gong is Great."

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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1630961