The contrasting receptions, recalled vividly by commentators, pretty much summed up the US approach and priorities at a time when China struts the world stage like an economic colossus with military ambitions to match. It would be a stretch to say China owns the US, but it is no great secret that President Hu is being courted, coddled and occasionally criticized because of Beijing's stranglehold on the US economy.
A 21-gun salute rang out and the marching band played on the South Lawns of the White House at the ceremonial welcome reminiscent of the one President Obama gave Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November 2009. But the tone of the speeches was different. There was none of the soaring rhetoric and warm fuzzy sentiment that marked U.S-India exchanges. Instead, there was a sense of mild reproach from Obama when he referred glancingly to human rights; Hu huffed about both countries needing to respect each others' development path and core interests. They did not exactly but heads; nor was it a clinch.
There is no mistaking the fact that China's financial and economic clout is clouding, if not dominating, the visit. And notwithstanding token noises about human rights and political freedom, the Obama administration's primary concern is how to wean itself out of its indebtedness to the country that was till recently seen as a brooding Third World giant that produced cheap goods and indulged in large-scale human rights violation.
So Vice-President Joe Biden himself hot-footed it to the Andrews AirForce Base on an icy Tuesday night to welcome the Chinese leader. President Obama hosted him to a private dinner at the White House soon after his arrival -- notwithstanding the formal state banquet slated for Wednesday evening -- with few missing the irony of one Nobel Peace laureate entertaining a man who has imprisoned another Nobel Peace Prize winner.
No word whether Obama raised the issue of the incarceration or any other touchy matter more forcefully in private, but Wednesday morning, following the usual pomp and ceremony, the two leaders are met for talks at the Oval Office following by delegation level exchanges in the Cabinet room. They are also expected to attend a meeting of U.S and Chinese in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building before White House Press Conference in the afternoon.
Shorn of hyperbole and boiled down to essentials, the meeting is akin to one between a banker and a client, with the latter seeking ways to ease the debt burden and the former trying to ensure the borrower remains liquid enough to pay back as per terms agreed. The rest, including disagreements about Iran, North Korea, Taiwan, Tibet etc are minor distractions thrown up to engage various interested constituencies.
The biggest constituency is the debt-trapped American people. For all of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's feisty declarations about human rights, Washington's worst kept secret is that borrowers can't be choosers. Among the cards the US has is a sort of default or rewriting rules, but they are not seen as viable or necessary just now despite the rants of a few lawmakers. So, for now, Obama has embarked on a course of extracting concessions from China to reduce its gigantic $ 252 billion trade surplus.
In words that echoed what the US President told Indians in Mumbai last year, the White House on Wednesday put increasing exports to China and increasing investment in the United States, "both critical to supporting millions of American jobs," on top of the agenda. Everything else was secondary to that objective.
One analyst likened the visit to a "slap-on-the-back for the national leader of America's biggest foreign lender," pointing out that with over $895 billion in US Government securities, China held 6.4 percent of the US National Debt and "when someone invests that much in your country, they probably deserve an opulent State Dinner at the White House." Whether the back-slapping will be mutual or whether the two sides make a meal of the engagement is something that will be watched with bated breath in many world capitals.
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