[A volunteer on the outskirts of Beijing in a campaign urging Obama to honour promises and ensure the U.S. plays a key role in climate change negotiations. Pic by Jason Lee.] 

U.S. President Barack Obama hopes to win over a sometimes wary Chinese public at a “townhall” meeting in Shanghai on Monday, inviting questions from young people and also — the White House hopes — reaching out across the Internet to the country’s some 300 million Internet users.
 
But Obama better prepare for some combative, and outright odd, quizzing, to judge from Chinese Internet web sites that have begun inviting people to suggest questions to lob at Obama.

The questions range from thoughtful ones about trade policy,Tibet and Taiwan to angry rants about U.S. foreign policy and one provocative one about handing over California to China !

Here’s Beijing Senior Correspondent Chris Buckley’s story  on what Obama could be up against next week.