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.
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
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