Obama’s China Visit a Setback for American Values, Interests

After denying that he has soft-peddled human rights issues with China, President Obama not only did exactly what he denied doing, he even managed to package his message in yet another cringe-inducing apology:

Obama acknowledged that the United States has struggled with race relations over the course of its history, but he said America would “always speak out” in favor of free expression, worship, political participation and access to information — which he termed “universal rights.”

“They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities, whether they are in the United States, China or any nation,” he said. [L.A. Times]

The very fact of Obama’s presidency belies the stupidity of this implicit moral equivalence between the United States and China. That is especially so amid an ongoing purge of Tibetan and Uygur dissent and a slow asphyxiation of their centuries-old nationhood. The L.A. Times failed to note that even this exchange was heavily stage-managed, coached, and ultimately, censored. The Washington Post didn’t miss it:

Meeting with a carefully screened group of students at the marquee event of his Asia trip, President Obama on Monday sought to advance what he called America’s “core principles” during his first public appearance in China. But the event itself — billed as an opportunity for Obama to reach beyond Chinese officialdom — illustrated the Chinese government’s tight grip.

The “freedoms of expression and worship, of access to information and political participation, we believe are universal rights,” Obama said at a town hall-style meeting in Shanghai, China’s most modern and outward-looking metropolis. [Washington Post]

But the venue made a mockery of even this token statement:

Virtually every aspect of the event was staged, and it was unclear how many Chinese citizens saw the hour-long exchange, which was not broadcast on national television. One of the most provocative statements Obama made — about the importance of opening up the Internet — was posted on Chinese news sites at first, but then was deleted.

Obama’s audience, selected and coached beforehand by university officials, came from eight different Shanghai universities. A small, random sampling suggested the vast majority were members of the Communist Party. Many of the eight questions put to the president by students echoed Chinese government talking points.

How disappointing. There’s no hint that President Obama breathed a word about the dozens of dissidents the Chinese police rounded up as Obama was arriving, nor was there any apparent mention of China shipping North Korean refugees to Kim Jong Il’s death camps, something that can fairly be described as a crime against humanity. In other words, Obama’s visit not only failed to advance the values that will allow us to avoid conflict with China and create real unity in the two nations’ interests, it was an arguable setback for those values by signaling their insignificance and creating an excuse for China to intensify the repression.

Families of Japanese abductees, meanwhile, say they are pleased that Obama seemed to promise not to restore full diplomatic relations to North Korea until North Korea accounts for what it did to their loved ones. But this essentially endorses the Chris Hill-George Bush removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, something that American diplomats had also promised not to do for many years absent that accounting. Nor should anyone invest too much confidence in President Obama’s promises before having a word with the widow of the Reverend Kim Dong Shik.