In Defense of Obama’s Trip to China
President Obama’s recent trip to China was harshly criticized by the Western media as having been a “failure”. Among the criticisms: he was too deferential; he didn’t speak out enough on human rights; he failed to press Beijing firmly on revaluing its currency; he achieved no concrete results on Iran or North Korea….and the list goes on.
Quite the opposite, I would argue the trip was a success on many levels. The major goal of the trip was to make the case for multilateral cooperation regarding the pressing challenges of the global economy, climate change, nuclear proliferation, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan-Pakistan. America cannot solve these problems alone and it cannot seek China’s help while ignoring their interests or giving disproportionate emphasis to human rights. Obama understands this and made significant progress in getting China on board with many of these U.S.- led efforts.
It is not useful to assess Obama’s trip according to goals he didn’t set for himself. Contrary to popular opinion (and the press), Obama did not expect China to agree to any deliverables upon completion of his visit there, like revaluing its currency, making concessions on Tibet or human rights, or agreeing to significant deviations in regards to its North Korea or Iran policies. Significant differences remain between the two countries on these issues and it is unrealistic to expect large shifts in Chinese policy with one presidential visit. However, recent reports about China’s decision to back a strongly worded rebuke of Iran’s nuclear program and pledge to significantly curtail emissions point to the fact that Obama may have gotten small but substantive pledges from the Chinese. Unfortunately, as is often the case when the media follows presidential trips abroad, perceptions trump reality, and in the 24-hour news cycle, initial perceptions of events, however right or wrong, get plastered on the front pages of newspapers nationwide. Perceptions are often wrong, and I would argue that any outcome from the trip could take weeks, months, even years to bear fruit.
The Atlantic’s James Fallows has been leading the charge against the negatives perceptions of Obama’s trip. I found two posts on the reaction from an expat and an Obama administration official to Obama’s Shanghai Town Hall Meeting particularly interesting. Two sections I’d like to highlight: one from a foreigner living and working in China for over two decades:
“…But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:
‘Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are — when they’re in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that’s irresponsible, or — but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear. It forces me to examine what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.’
“Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply — and potentially more “subversively” or “destabilizingly” — than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to "the Kremlin"] fears the most, and rightly so.”
And this one from an Obama administration official in charge of coordinating the trip about what the Administration hoped for from the trip:
“In thinking about the trip, the things we were trying to accomplish were all basically long term things. We were not looking for ‘deliverables’ or one-day stories. You’ve now got eight or nine countries among the G20 that are Asia-Pacific countries. The historic shift of power and influence from West to East is reflected in that number.
“Obama is very focused on global issues, things like climate change, financial imbalances, non proliferation, energy issues. We saw all the countries on this trip as players on those global issues. Of course China is important in particular, but also Korea and Japan and the ASEAN countries. So we saw this as a way of developing relationships that would be helpful to us as we tackled these issues coming down the road.
“We’ve got Copenhagen [climate talk] coming up in mid-December. We have Iran heading increasingly likely toward Plan B rather than Plan A, pressure rather than inducements. North Korea. And the Copenhagen session is very far from a done deal. The countries we dealt with are all key players here. And on the economic side, you’ve got the whole issue of rebalancing the global agenda. None of those is something where you come out of a meeting and say Eureka. They’re all part of a long process and a long game.
“The other thing we had in mind, which has to do with the whole “rising China” phenomenon: we wanted to solidify the relationship with China. To show them that we’re not going to have a fluctuating policy. That we know what we’re doing, and understand that we are dealing from a position of strength. And at the same time, to all our traditional allies [Japan, Korea, etc], we wanted to reinforce their sense of comfort that our relationship with China won’t be at their expense.”
About the Town Hall meeting in Shanghai: Why was it “censored” rather than streamed to anyone who wanted to see it in China?
“We negotiated endlessly against a very difficult Chinese government on the issue. Their intransigence tells me several things. It was the day before the meeting with Hu Jintao, and there were uneasy about what might be said in a live format. ["Surprise" = "unacceptable risk" in many official Chinese dealings.] This was also a townhall format of a type they had never had before. [What about Bill Clinton's? That was a roundtable plus a speech, not a town hall.] We wanted to have 1000 or 1500 people. They said No. Security problems, and so on. So, we got to 500. We insisted on live streaming. Endless fights on that. Then live TV. Endless fights. And questions from the internet. Huge fights over who would pose them and who would screen. There wasn’t a single aspect of the meeting that wasn’t hard fought.
“It was tortured enough that we thought about pulling the plug. At the end of the day we decided to go through. The point is that on the Chinese side, this showed more than the usual anxiety. I think there was a genuine anxiety about the possible… force of Barack Obama. I would say a word short of “subversive” or “destabilizing.” But something profoundly disturbing to their system of government and control. The anxiety was a tribute to the kind of inspirational force he has.
“What they actually did, was to put the live streaming part on Xinhua.net. For the opening portion, we studied very carefully Ronald Reagan’s speech at Fudan in 1984. It began almost identically: Here is who we are, and these are our values. But Reagan’s ended with a poem from Zhou Enlai. Can you Imagine what would have happened if Barack Obama had ended up with a poem by Zhou Enlai?
“We know there were tens of millions of hits on Xinhua.net. And more than two or three tens of millions. Some people complained that this was carried ‘only’ on Shanghai TV, but that reaches reaches 100 million households. Of the top 10 Chinese web sites, nine carried news and commentary. Thousands of user generated messages and blog posts. Tens of millions people in the first instance saw it, and by the time it’s over the number is going to be staggering. Whenever we had a discussion about, Should we pull the plug, we thought, if there is an opportunity to talk to tens of millions of people, that is an opportunity we should take. People can draw their conclusions about China and America from the event.”
And this from Obama’s National Security Advisor for Asia and Chief China advisor, Jeffrey Bader, about Obama’s comments to Hu Jintao on human rights, which you can find in it entirety here:
“I just want to say a word about human rights. I’ve been involved in the China relationship for over 30 years, and I’ve been on previous presidential visits, visits by secretaries of state to China. This was as direct a discussion on human rights as I’ve seen by any high-level visitor with the Chinese. And this was multifaceted. You all saw the Shanghai event yesterday in which the President spoke at some length in his introductory remarks about American values, about rule of law, freedom of expression, access to information, the rights of minorities — called them universal rights; and then in the question-and-answer session talked again at some length about the importance of an uncensored Internet and how people benefit, countries benefit, and leaders benefit from the openness of the Internet. I have never heard that kind of a discussion publicly in China before…
…they discussed Tibet. The President — you saw in the joint press conference, the President referred — the joint press conference, the President referred explicitly to the importance of protection of freedom of religion and the rights of ethnic minorities, and then immediately discussed the importance of a resumption of a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and representatives — the Dalai Lama’s representatives and the Chinese government. That was a deliberate and a clear statement of the priority the President places on this, and it was discussed privately, as well — the President making clear his respect for the Dalai Lama as a cultural and religious leader, and his intention to meet with the Dalai Lama at an appropriate time.”



