Changing China
Giant on the move
An Unlikely Couple
Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, arguably the world’s two most powerful men, stand shoulder to shoulder for their respective national anthems in Beijing on Tuesday.
But there are few smiles ahead of a morning of bilateral meetings on everything from the value of China’s currency to global warming. With their nations’ fates so bound to the relationship, and faced with the challenge of juggling trade and Tibet, it’s anyone’s guess what’s going through their minds.
It doesn’t help when a slightly disorientated Obama bumps into Hu’s back. But the Chinese President comes to the rescue with a gentle tug in the right direction.
“Which way are we going?” Obama asks Hu (who is not known to speak much English) as they leave their joint press briefing.
The question others may be asking is: “Who’s leading whom?”
Photo credit: David Gray
A Hu-Ma summit in 2012?
When Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou was elected ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman in July, pundits jumped on the idea that he would use his new title to help secure a meeting with China’s President Hu Jintao. The first-of-a-kind summit would follow six decades of strained relations including China’s threats of military force against the island.
Ma’s new job, which he will take in mid-October, allows him to meet Communist Party Chairman Hu in a party-to-party role, laying aside each side’s presidential title. China does not recognise Taiwan’s presidency or other government institutions as it claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island.
Beijing’s state-run China Daily newspaper said such a meeting would signal “great reconciliation.”
A meeting would best take place in 2012, according to a KMT spokesman, Lee Chien-jung.
Before then, Ma will be wary of Taiwan’s divided public, Lee said. Taiwanese generally favour closer economic ties with China but oppose rushing into a relationship with the long-distrusted Communist government on fears that Beijing would compromise Taiwan’s self-rule, including its democracy. Ma will monitor opinion polls for any change in sentiment, the spokesman said, ruling out any meeting in the short term.
Ma could also be embarrased at home if Hu declined to acknowledge his title as president.
Odds of a meeting will surge in 2012 if Ma wins re-election by a big margin in March of that year, which would be an endorsement of China-friendly economic policies that have characterised his administration since he took office in May 2008.
China’s 60th anniversary : Live
4:30 pm : China celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, floats and nuclear-capable missiles, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism.
The two hour-parade of picture-perfect soldiers, tanks and missiles, floats and 100,000 well-drilled civilians was a proud moment for many Chinese citizens, as reporters Ben Blanchard and Lucy Hornby write.
The weather was perfect too, with the Chinese air force deploying a "magic-like" range of chemicals and technology to clear Beijing's smoggy air.
Here's another image from the grand parade:
I am a chinese, but study in england, i want to say there are some problems in china, but not all things you see from TV is ture. Believe your eyes but not others.Before i came to england, i think that english will look down upon chinese, however, they are very friendly to me.please see others advantage!do you like other people say some bad words to you when you have 60th birthday?
from India Insight:
India, China leaders move to ease new strains in ties
While Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia captured all the attention, Singh's talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao may turn out to be just as important in easing off renewed pressure on the complex relationship between the world's rising powers.
India said this month it will bolster its defences on the unsettled China border, deploying up to 50,000 troops and its most latest Su-30 fighter aircraft at a base in the northeast.
While upgrading the defences has been a long-running objective, the timing seemed to suggest New Delhi's renewed fears of "strategic encirclement" by China by deepening ties with all of its neighbours, not just Pakistan but also Sri Lanka and Nepal.
The chief of the Indian air force, reflecting the anxieties in the security establishment, said China was a far bigger threat than Pakistan because so little was known about Beijing's combat capabilities.
Predictably enough, the Indian military moves and statements drew a strong response from China's official media warning that New Delhi's tough new posture was dangerous if it thought it would compel China to cave in. Beijing was in a different league, both in terms of national power, economic scale and global influence, the media said.
On Monday, Hu and Singh met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the BRIC meeting that followed in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. Details from the meeting were sketchy, but the Press Trust of India said the two leaders supported an early meeting of a joint economic group to push trade ties.
They also touched on the border dispute at the heart of the more than four decades of distrust, noting that top negotiators were due to meet in August. The People's Daily said Hu stressed on expanding economic cooperation and investment flows and aims to take bilateral trade to $60 billion in 2010. It stood at $51.8 billion in 2008, the paper said.
Some interesting points in the comments thread so far: is this BRIC grouping really going to work or will it in a few years look more like BRI, (Brazil, Russia, India) with China doing its own thing.
David Shambaugh had an interesting piece in the IHT around the time of the BRIC meeting, which said that while it was all very good that the leaders of the major economies were assembled under one roof, there was plenty that divided them. He focuses on China and Russia saying there were signs that the 20-year honeymoon may be ending, with the neighbours reverting to their traditional suspicion and competition. here is the link to it :http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opini on/16iht-edshambaugh.html
Does my body double really drink more than me?
I’m at the Olympics in my role as Editor-in-Chief — that means I’m doing some journalism and some “representational” work as the senior person from Reuters News and Thomson Reuters in Beijing for the Games.
In the representational role, I was invited to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state banquet along with a score of other media leaders — among them News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, the BBC’s Mark Thompson, AP’s Tom Curley, Russia’s Rianovosti’s Chief Editor Svetlana Mironyuk and Dr. Dinh The Huynh, member of Vietnam’s Communist Party Central Committee and Editor-in-Chief of the Nhan Dan newspaper.
Held in the vast and imposing Great Hall of the People off Tiananmen Square, the banquet was an amazing opportunity to see Chinese leaders in a rare informal pose and to chat with a variety of current and former world leaders.
“Reuters? I have no problem with Reuters, but of course I’m out of all that now,” former U.S. President George H.W. Bush said to me.
Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew asked me sharply if we’d report the Olympics fairly. I replied that China’s Xinhua news agency had already quoted my assertion that we would! (I think if you read all our coverage you’ll see that we are applying our usual, global standards of good journalism to everything we do here).
The banquet itself — each large round table graced with a pair of huge peacocks carved out of radishes — went off with military precision, plates presented and then whisked away to make sure that everyone would get out in good time to do some business in the afternoon before the grand opening ceremony.
I was told that two practice banquets had been held, one five days before and one 10 days before, to get the timing and the presentation exactly right.
Obama should have arrived Beijing one day earlier to rehearse this welcoming proceedings and so save himself from embarrassement in bumping Hu’s shoulder. Or the rehearsal may take place inside White House with Gary Lock prior to this trip.