The global economic crisis reaped yet another victim on Sunday — the storied tradition of normally starchy APEC leaders decked out in gaudy local dress.
As this year’s APEC summit is in Hawaii, journalists had been salivating at the prospect of leaders such as Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) modeling the US state’s colorful Aloha floral shirts.
Against the backdrop of towering palm trees and the sparkling Pacific Ocean, the leaders kept their Hawaiian shirts under wraps and lined out in their suits, waving stiffly to waiting photographers before quickly leaving.
FANCY OUTFITS
Obama later told reporters it was about time the fancy APEC outfits were retired.
“I got rid of the Hawaiian shirts because I had looked at pictures of some of the previous APEC meetings and some of the garb that had appeared previously, and I thought this may be a tradition that we might want to break,” he said.
“We gave them a shirt, and if they wanted to wear the shirt, I promise you it would have been fine, but I didn’t hear a lot of complaints about us breaking precedent on that one.”
The sight of Obama joshing around with foreign leaders in a silly shirt on palm-fringed Hawaii is hardly the image his political aides want to project as he starts his tough re-election bid.
The leaders also skipped the ritual at last year’s APEC summit in Yokohama, Japan, appearing in sober business suits, after organizers decided against turning them out in local garb.
SILK KIMONOS
Their wives got to wear resplendent silk kimonos handed out by the hosts.
The annual APEC group photo has seen its share of fashion disasters.
Clinton handed out leather bomber jackets in Seattle in 1993, but world leaders including then-US president George W. Bush and then-Russian president Vladimir Putin were forced to don blue calf-length silk tunics in Hanoi in 2006.
In 2005, in Busan, South Korea, red-faced APEC leaders appeared in blue and gold South Korean silk overcoats called durumagi.
In her autobiography, Cherie Blair, wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, revealed some of the political calculations that can lie behind even the simple act of donning a fancy outfit overseas.
She said her husband was given a lesson in international politics at a summit in Japan when she said Clinton chose the most hideous shirt offered to world leaders.
“Why on earth did you do that?” Blair asked Clinton, according to his wife’s book.
“‘Take it from an old timer,’ Bill said,” according to Cherie Blair, before explaining that the British prime minister’s less offensive shirt was a naive political choice.
“‘Now you Tony, wearing that particular shirt, people at home might conceivably think that you chose to wear it,’” Clinton was quoted as saying.
a good man
“‘Me, wearing this shirt, everybody at home is going to think, ‘Boy is that Clinton diplomatic, being so nice to those foreigners. There’s no way he would have chosen to wear that. What a good man he is,’’” the former US president was quoted as saying by Cherie Blair.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in