Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) arrived in Washington on Tuesday to find demonstrators outside his bedroom window and a stream of condemnation flowing from Capitol Hill.
At the same time, the mainstream media was full of criticism.
The Washington Post condemned China for continuing to “deny its citizens freedom and the rule of law.” The New York Times said that China would never be a great nation if it continued censoring and imprisoning its people. And the Wall Street Journal said that if China wanted to be treated as an equal it had to act like one.
Hu barely had time to unpack before he was whisked across Pennsylvania Avenue to attend a private dinner in the White House with US President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.
It was a low-key affair at which both sides agreed in advance to discuss the tone and the tenor of US-China relations while avoiding contentious issues like human rights and Taiwan.
Those issues were being kept for yesterday, when Hu was to be given a 21-gun salute, a state dinner and two more closed-door sessions with Obama.
TAIWAN DISCUSSION
Analysts believe that Taiwan would be raised in the first of these sessions — to be held in the Oval Office — and that Obama would reiterate US policy to sell arms to Taiwan. Some analysts also say he would urge Hu to cut back on the number of missiles now threatening Taiwan.
What is not known is how Obama would react to any new proposals concerning Taiwan that Hu might make.
The Chinese delegation is staying in Blair House, a government mansion just across the street from the White House and next door to the 2.8 hectare Lafayette Park where Taiwanese, Tibetan and Uyghur demonstrations were in full swing with participants shouting slogans and waving flags.
Meanwhile, about the same time as Hu’s plane was touching down, Republican Representative Chris Smith opened a conference in a congressional hearing room on “Human Rights in Hu Jintao’s China.”
Smith said that it was “inconceivable” that the security and media campaign unleashed in China against Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), his family and his supporters, wasn’t approved by Hu.
He said that Obama, as the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate, had an obligation to call for Liu’s release “publicly and vigorously.”
“Beyond this, I urge President Obama to join us in speaking out for all those in China whose basic human rights are violated. I particularly want to mention Chinese women. The Chinese government’s one-child-per-couple policy, with its attendant horrors of forced abortion campaigns and rampant sex-selective abortion, is, in scope and seriousness, the worst human rights abuse — the worst gender crime — in the world today,” Smith said.
“Unfortunately, for two years the Obama administration has made nothing but weak, pro forma responses to human rights abuses in China,” he said. “Our country can’t afford to continue doing this. We need to challenge human rights abuses publicly and in language that shows we mean business. We need to show that a major factor in estimating the Chinese government’s threat to other countries is its abuse of its own people.”
However, such demands come as the US is pushing China to buy tens of billions of dollars in Boeing Co aircraft, auto parts, agricultural goods and beef.
And leaders from both sides say that they want to demonstrate that the relationship is back on track.
Meanwhile, the mood in Congress is not sweet.
Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer unveiled legislation this week to punish China for suppressing the value of its currency.
“Both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and the House, and the American people are just fed up when, up and down the line, China doesn’t play by the rules and seeks unfair economic advantage,” Schumer said.
PEACE AND STABILITY: Maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ has long been the government’s position, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan is committed to maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” and seeks no escalation of tensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, rebutting a Time magazine opinion piece that described President William Lai (賴清德) as a “reckless leader.” The article, titled “The US Must Beware of Taiwan’s Reckless Leader,” was written by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank. Goldstein wrote that Taiwan is “the world’s most dangerous flashpoint” amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that the situation in the Taiwan Strait has become less stable
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
REASSURANCE: The US said Taiwan’s interests would not be harmed during the talk and that it remains steadfast in its support for the nation, the foreign minister said US President Donald Trump on Friday said he would bring up Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea this week. “I will be talking about Taiwan [with Xi],” Trump told reporters before he departed for his trip to Asia, adding that he had “a lot of respect for Taiwan.” “We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk about with us. I think we’ll have a good meeting,” Trump said. Taiwan has long been a contentious issue between the US and China.
UKRAINE, NVIDIA: The US leader said the subject of Russia’s war had come up ‘very strongly,’ while Jenson Huang was hoping that the conversation was good Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump had differing takes following their meeting in Busan, South Korea, yesterday. Xi said that the two sides should complete follow-up work as soon as possible to deliver tangible results that would provide “peace of mind” to China, the US and the rest of the world, while Trump hailed the “great success” of the talks. The two discussed trade, including a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade, as well as cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, among other issues, but they did not mention
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