Last look back
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, April 23, 2006
I was pretty much ready to quit Hu — but then I found a few more interesting tidbits from some of the weekend newspapers, radio and TV shows.
For starters, here’s this from Fox News. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192812,00.html Paul Gigot, the host of Sunday’s Journal Editorial Report told guest James MacGregor he was surprised that Hu started his visit here in the Northwest, not in the other Washington. (Obviously he hasn’t been reading The Herald, or he’d know this stuff.)
Key Quote(s): “GIGOT — ‘Interesting to see the Chinese president stop, not in Washington, D.C. first, but in Washington state, visiting Boeing and Microsoft. What message was he trying to send?’
MCGREGOR: ‘Well, I think he gets along with business people better than he does other politicians. He doesn’t have any real strife with the business community other than various trade issues. And Boeing is always a stop for the Chinese leaders. They all like to do what the other leaders did. And everybody stops at Boeing.’”
One big surprise for me is how the state-run Chinese news media has handled the heckling Hu got on the South Lawn. They’ve ignored it, reports the Straits Times in Singapore. http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=43901
Key Quote: “Chinese state media have put an extremely positive spin on President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States so far, including imposing a blackout on a heckling incident that occurred during his speech on the White House lawn. … Analysts say this is significant because Mr Hu’s visit is as much about Sino-US ties as it is about playing to his domestic audience, who want to see their leader being feted and treated as an equal by Washington.”
The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=43932 noted that “media in the US and the mainland had different views of the visit.”
Key Quote: “The New York Times described the meeting between Bush and Hu ‘plagued by gaffes…’ The Washington Post lamented its lack of substance. … On the other hand, China’s state-controlled media all played up a shining moment in Hu’s trip — when he put on a baseball cap and hugged a representative of Boeing in Seattle. The reports compared his ‘hat diplomacy’ to the much hailed episode of late patriarch Deng Xiaoping who donned a cowboy hat during his historic visit to the US in 1979.”
And the Morning Post on Saturday http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=44037 reported that analysts are split on the fallout.
Key Quote: “Some observers said Beijing would treat the blunders as snubs. … But Huang Jing, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the central government would brush aside the incidents to avoid more embarrassment. In China, CCTV carried no mention of the Falun Gong protest. BBC and CNN news reports … were blacked out for several minutes during the coverage of Mr Hu’s White House visit.”
Finally, China Radio International today looked at the relationship between China and this Washington in a show that includes an interview with a key Boeing executive in China. (The link to the specific page is problematic, but if you follow this one http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/radio/ then scroll down the column on the left to the link for People in the Know under the heading of Daily, you should get to a report called “China and One-Fiftieth of the United States.”)
Key Quote: “Chinese President Hu Jintao made a point of stopping in Washington State, on the US west coast, to try to strengthen relations with that particular state. Why? Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks — just to name a few of the key companies who have a major stake in that west coast state.”
And now, in the words of CRI host Paul James — Ming tian jian. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.
