"The Chinese had been sitting on their hands on NK," said Paal, who served on the National Security Council staffs of presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. After Obama's phone call there was a quick reaction. Beijing dispatched its foreign minister to Pyonyang "and the North Koreans pivoted on a dime away from escalation and controversy," said Paal.Human power balance rightsOn the perennial irritant in U.S.-China relations, Obama pressed his case more aggressively than during the first two years of his administration, bringing up the case of imprisoned human rights champion Liu Xiaobo in his talks with Hu Jintao.Traditionally, in run-ups to summits, the U.S. asks for -- and sometimes gets -- freedom for dissidents in the other country.But when the Nobel Committee awarded Liu the Peace Prize, "it turned the Chinese from Jell-O into steel," Paal said. Pushing for more during the summit wasn't possible under the atmosphere of the Peace Prize, he said.But Obama did need to prove to Americans that he was not weak on human rights. Hence this tough, but nuanced comment at his joint news conference with Hu.At one point during the state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, U.S. President Barack Obama sounded like salesman-in-chief."We want to sell you all kinds of stuff," Obama said to Hu with a smile. "We want to sell you planes, we want to sell you cars, we want to sell you software."Helping American companies sell more to China's mother lode of 1.3 billion potential consumers was at the top of the president's to-do list at this summit. After all, China is now the world's second-largest economy after the United States.But the U.S. and China now are intertwined on a complex web of issues, from security to human rights, and Obama raised all of them during his talks with the Chinese president.So, how did his "coach outlet store sales job" go?Obama also moved Hu a bit on North Korea, winning a statement of "concern" over the North's claim that it is enriching uranium.That shift began before the summit in December when Obama telephoned Hu, says Douglas Paal, longtime China expert and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Obama administration was frustrated by China's hands-off approach to increasing belligerence by the North, as it sank a South Korean naval vessel last March and fired on civilians on Yeonpyeong Island in November.
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eileen le vendredi 21 janvier 2011
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