Former US vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said the US government was wasting taxpayers’ money and could aggravate poverty, delegates at her first speech outside North America said yesterday.
Palin, the former governor of Alaska, gave hundreds of financial big-hitters at the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong a wide-ranging speech that covered Alaska, international terrorism, US economic policy and trade with China.
Her performance, which was closed to the media, divided opinion.
Some of those who attended praised her forthright views on government social and economic intervention, while others walked out early in disgust.
“She was brilliant,” a European delegate said on condition of anonymity. “She said America was spending a lot of money and it was a temporary solution. Normal people are having to pay more and more but things don’t get better. The rich will leave the country and the poor will get poorer.”
Two US delegates left early, with one, who declined to be identified, saying: “It was awful, we couldn’t stand it any longer.”
Palin, who shot to national and international prominence after Senator John McCain picked her as his running mate last year, stepped down as Alaska governor in July but has provided little insight into her future plans.
In the CLSA speech, which lasted about 75 minutes, Palin also tackled the recent US trade spat with China, a country she said the US should have the best possible relationship with.
According to delegates, she said US President Barack Obama’s administration worsened an already difficult situation earlier this month when he slapped duties on Chinese tire imports blamed for costing US jobs.
They said she praised the economic policies of former US president Ronald Reagan and criticized the current administration for intervening too much during the recent financial crisis.
Although she touched on the threat posed to the US by terrorism and talked about links with traditional US allies in Asia such as Japan, Australia and South Korea, one Asian delegate complained she devoted too much time to her home state of Alaska.
“It was almost more of a speech promoting investment in Alaska,” he said, declining to be named.
“As fund managers we want to hear about the United States as a whole, not just about Alaska. And she criticized Obama a lot but offered no solutions,” he said.
Another said he was disappointed that she took only pre-arranged questions.
There were no apparent gaffes though from Palin, who was mocked during last year’s presidential campaign for her lack of experience in foreign affairs and for her verbal blunders.
Several delegates saw the speech as a sign of her ambitions to run as a presidential candidate in 2012 and a useful indication of the potential direction of US politics in the future.
“It was fairly right-wing populist stuff,” one US delegate said.
Palin blasted Obama’s proposals on healthcare, reiterating a previous statement made to the press that the plan would include a bureaucratic “death panel” that would decide who gets assistance, he said.
Another from the US said: “She frightens me because she strikes a chord with a certain segment of the population and I don’t like it.”
CLSA, an arm of French bank Credit Agricole, said it closed Palin’s session to the media after she indicated that she would have to adjust her speech if reporters were present.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing