Sarkozy, whose country holds the Group of 20 presidency this year, is adding a stop-off in China to a trip to the French South Pacific territory of New Caledonia following his discussions with several world leaders on sinking world markets.

His office said he would meet Hu at 5 p.m. local time (0900 GMT) on Thursday for talks followed by a dinner. He will fly on to New Caledonia the same night, for his first visit to the archipelago territory since taking power in 2007.

On what will be Sarkozy’s sixth visit to China as French president, the two leaders may discuss a Franco-German proposal to tax financial transactions, a highly divisive idea that would only be effective if supported widely around the world.

They will most probably also discuss France’s G20 agenda before a likely G20 ministerial meeting on the margins of the annual IMF and World Bank gatherings in Washington in late September and a summit of G7 finance ministers in Marseille, France, earlier that month.

Sarkozy has been pressing to get Chinese backing for his G20 goals, which include seeking ways to lessen economic imbalances and reduce market speculation and commodity price volatility.

Only a hard-fought compromise kept Beijing on board at G20 finance talks in February to agree on indicators to gauge global economic imbalances.

In another development, Germany earlier rebuffed renewed calls that euro zone countries should issue joint euro-denominated bonds and have a joint finance minister, arguing that would only be possible if fiscal policy were collective already.

“As long as we don’t collectivize financial policy we also cannot have a uniform interest rate level. The different rate levels are the incentive to run a solid economy or the punishment if you are not running it properly,” Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, speaking at his ministry’s open day.

“So the question is, how do we manage to promote political integration step by step. We cannot collectivize interest rates,” Schaeuble said, referring to proposals that the euro currency bloc should issue common euro bonds.

Germany has led resistance to calls that the euro currency bloc should issue common euro bonds and expand its bailout fund to calm repeated market selloffs of government bonds and bank shares of vulnerable debtor countries.

Der Spiegel magazine reported finance ministry calculations that showed issuing joint euro bonds would cost Germany billions of euros each year.

However, Martin Blessing, Chief Executive of Germany’s second-largest lender Commerzbank said a European finance minister with sway over member states’ taxes and budget was needed to lead the euro zone out of its debt crisis.

Berlin is also facing criticism over its own proposals to solve the euro zone crisis, which include a financial transaction tax that Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Sarkozy said recently they would propose to other euro zone members.

Schaeuble is to meet his French counterpart Francois Baroin in Paris on Tuesday to discuss the health of Europe’s finances including remedies such as the tax.

Andreas Schmitz, the head of the association of German banks (BdB), whose clients would be directly affected by the tax, said the tax would be inefficient and would not prevent financial crises as professional traders did not care where they traded and would simply avoid Europe.

“The big tax income will fail to appear,” he told Bild a.m. Sonntag newspaper. Proponents of the tax expect it could raise 30 to 50 billion euros a year.