By Bill Tarrant

SYDNEY, Sept 6 (Reuters) - China takes the spotlight at the Asia-Pacific leaders forum on Thursday when President Hu Jintao meets U.S. President George W. Bush and Australia's prime minister to discuss security, product safety and climate change.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard meets in the morning with Hu, who has had a warm reception since his arrival on Monday when he visited the mining-rich state of Western Australia before heading to Canberra and a tour of a sheep farm.

But in Sydney, police said three rallies are scheduled on Thursday to protest against China's human rights record, including one by the religious group Falun Gong and another by the "Free China Association".

Australia has launched its biggest ever security operation in Sydney to welcome the 21 leaders attending this week's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. Newspapers have dubbed the city of more than 4 million people "Fortress Sydney".

Howard is lobbying fellow leaders heavily on his climate change initiative, which will be issued as a Sydney Declaration at the end of the weekend summit.

The draft calls for "aspirational" energy efficiency targets, rather than binding ones, adding some 20 million ha of forest cover in the region and transferring emissions technology to help developing APEC economies adapt to climate change.

But developing economies -- including China -- are strongly opposed to any wording that commits them to binding targets and some say they would prefer climate change goals be handled at a U.N. meeting later this month.

PRODUCT SAFETY

Bush meets Hu later on Thursday and says he expects to have robust discussions on everything from product safety and trade to climate change, jailed dissidents, Beijing's support for Mynamar's junta, the Dalai Lama and Iran.

"I will sit down with the President and have a good honest, candid discussion, and he's going to tell me what's on his mind and I'm darned sure going to tell him what's on my mind," Bush said at a news conference with Howard on Wednesday.

The two men are only scheduled to meet for 20 minutes.

Some analysts have said the United States has sacrificed its relationship with allies in Asia to focus on the Middle East and Iraq, but Bush denied that China would dominate the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meeting going on in Sydney.

"I know there has been speculation in the Australian press, well is this a China summit?" Bush said during an interview with reporters on Air Force One after leaving Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq to head to Sydney. "The answer is absolutely not.

On climate change, Bush said China has "to be a part of defining the goals".

"Once we can get people to define the goals, then we can encourage people to define the tactics necessary to achieve the goals," he said at the news conference.

"I believe this strategy is going to be a lot more effective than trying ... to say, this is what you've got to do."

Bush started his day on Thursday meeting Australia's opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who has vowed to bring back Australian frontline troops from the Iraq war, calling it the biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.

Rudd holds a commanding lead in opinion poll over Howard -- a staunch supporter of the war -- ahead of a general election that is expected in the coming weeks, and soon could be in a position to reverse Howard's policies on the war.

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