Short of sending the President himself, the Bush administration is sending its highest level delegation to China next week led by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and six cabinet members.

Everything from currency to the trade deficit to intellectual property rights is on the agenda.

On today’s Power Lunch, CNBC’s Sue Herera took a hard look at what needed to happen to make this trip a success.

Her guests were Elizabeth Economy, the Director of Asia Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations - and Claude Barfield, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Elizabeth Economy says (for the trip to be a success) we need to have some near time progress – and we need to see that the Chinese are making progress on the full range of issues – environmental protection, currency appreciation and intellectual property rights.

Economy also says the American public and Congress and are tired of the promises being made by Beijing. She said Paulson will have to go into the trenches insist upon local enforcement of these laws.--and--if we don’t make progress and train these officials and quite frankly shame them into a better job--nothing will change.

Claude Barfield agrees. He also says Democrats tend to have a harder line on China and likely the Bush administration will use that to pressure Beijing to make changes.