Hu Jin Tao’s Visit to U.s.a
by "We want to sell you all kinds of stuff," Obama said to Hu with a smile. "We want to sell you planes, we want to sell you cars, we want to sell you software."
That shift began before the summit in December when Obama telephoned Hu, says Douglas Paal, longtime China expert and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Obama administration was frustrated by China’s hands-off approach to increasing belligerence by the North, as it sank a South Korean naval vessel last March and fired on civilians on Yeonpyeong Island in November.
“The Chinese had been sitting on their hands on N.K.,” said Paal, who served on the National Security Council staffs of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. After Obama’s phone call there was a quick reaction. Beijing dispatched its foreign minister to Pyongyang, “and the North Koreans pivoted on a dime away from escalation and controversy,” said Paal.
Human rights
On the perennial irritant in U.S.-China relations, Obama pressed his case more aggressively than during the first two years of his administration, bringing up the case of imprisoned human rights champion Liu Xiaobo in his talks with Hu Jintao.
Traditionally, in run-ups to summits, the U.S. asks for — and sometimes gets — freedom for dissidents in the other country.
But when the Nobel Committee awarded Liu the Peace Prize, “it turned the Chinese from Jell-O into steel,” Paal said. Pushing for more during the summit wasn’t possible under the atmosphere of the Peace Prize, he said.
But Obama did need to prove to Americans that he was not weak on human rights. Hence this tough, but nuanced comment at his joint news conference with Hu.
“I have been very candid with President Hu about these issues. Occasionally, they are a source of tension between our two governments. But what I believed is the same thing that I think seven previous presidents have believed, which is, is that we can engage and discuss these issues in a frank and candid way, focus on those areas where we agree, while acknowledging there are going to be areas where we disagree.”
That comment inched Hu to a rare admission that China could improve its human rights record.
“China is a developing country with a huge population and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform. In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development. And a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.”
Toting up the summit “score card,” the Carnegie Endowment’s Paal calls it a “pretty successful trip.”
“The real measure of it will be, ‘does the amity and cooperation that’s been promised by the two sides stick for the next 18-24 months?’ We can’t really pronounce it’s a true success until we’ve seen that,” Paal added.
Liked it
