Schwarzenegger promotes Calif. in China
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-17 23:20

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured China's largest steel plant Thursday morning, praising its use of California technologies to reduce wastewater pollution.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, followed by Margaret Wong, president of McWong Environmental and Energy Group in West Sacramento, Calif., points to a logo of Wong's company on the side of a wastewater treament facility during a tour at the Bao Steel plant in Shanghai, Thursday Nov. 17, 2005. The treatment facility was made by McWong Environmental and Energy Company. The governor is on a six-day trade mission to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.[AP]

Shanghai is the second city on Schwarzenegger's six-day trade mission promoting California products and business opportunities. He travels to Hong Kong later in the week.

"I think if you expect change from one day to the next it won't happen," Schwarzenegger said after touring Shanghai's BaoSteel plant.

With China's first confirmed human death from avian flu still fresh in Thursday's headlines, Schwarzenegger said he was ready to spend "whatever it takes" to make sure Californians were protected.

"We owe it to the people," he said. "I make very clear to everyone in my office, I don't want to hear afterward we didn't have enough staff in labs, we didn't respond quickly enough."

On the decision of whether to grant clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams, the co-founder of the Crips street gang who is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13 in California, Schwarzenegger said "it's never a fun thing to do, let me tell you ... You're dealing with someone's life."

He said an orderly process was in place to consider clemency for Williams, who shot and killed four people in 1979 during two robberies in Los Angeles.

In his years on death row, Williams, 51, has become a noted anti-gang activist. He has been nominated several times for a Nobel Peace Prize, has written children's books about the dangers of gang life and has a cadre of celebrity supporters.

Schwarzenegger noted that he was observing the second anniversary of his inauguration as governor, saying it had been the most rewarding two years of his life.

Despite the drubbing he took in the Nov. 8 special election when voters rejected his "year of reform" agenda, the Republican governor said he was ready to move on.

"I know there is the negative side to it, I know there is the beating you get, the ups and downs that are there but that's OK," he said. "I'm at the right place at the right time."

Schwarzenegger praised BaoSteel's use of environmental technology produced by McWong International, a California-based engineering and design company.

He was later scheduled to walk the red carpet at the Shanghai premiere of " Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."