Posted on 05/02/2002 2:08:30 PM PDT by swarthyguy
WASHINGTON: If one wants to get a sense of the relative importance of China and India in American eyes and in the global pecking order, one only has to compare the news coverage and reception that Chinese Vice-President Hu Jintao is getting this week compared to what India's Home Minister L K Advani received during his visit here some weeks back.
Both men are regarded as putative successors to the highest office in their respective countries. Both met the entire spectrum of the American leadership, all the way up to President Bush, and were warmly received.
But where Advani's visit was a mere blip on the screen, with nary a mention in the US media, Hu's arrival has disgorged reams of commentary and analysis, accompanied by the usual overdose of smart-alecy headlines his name lends itself to.
In a preview of the visit headlined "Who's Hu?" defense specialist William Triplett introduced him thus: "If all goes according to script at the Communist Party Congress this fall, Mr Hu will become the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, replacing Jiang Zemin."
Ezra Vogel, another Sinophile, called him China's "Heir Apparent" and described Hu's case as the first in Chinese Communist history in which a person was designated, trained for and then promoted to the top position.
The Bush administration evidently agrees with this assessment. It rolled out the red carpet to the visitor, treating him to a 30-minute pre-scheduled meeting with President Bush and longer sessions with vice-president Dick Cheney and other Cabinet officials.
Although both sides did not publicly discuss the talks by prior agreement, the visit, coming at a time when the two countries are still distrustful over the downing of an U.S spy plane and the Taiwan issue, is expected to result in greater exchanges if nothing else.
The guiding principle is the same as in the case with India – the two sides will live through the differences and build on agreements – although lately Beijing is beginning to have far more problems with Washington than does New Delhi.
For starters, the two sides agreed to restore military cooperation and exchanges that were frozen last year after the downing of the American spy plane.
But the two sides also discussed weapons proliferation, Taiwan and religious freedom, issues over which they disagree sharply.
Taiwan is a particularly sensitive subject for China. Although the Bush administration has said it still subscribes to the Clinton era policy of One-China leading to the possible re-unification of the estranged province with the mainland, it has been more forthright in indicating it will come to Taiwan's defence if China tries to take it by force.
In other lengthy analyses that accompanied the visit, American Sinologists portrayed Hu as a conservative party apparatchik poised to take over the Chinese in the long tradition of engineer-politicians. A hydraulic engineer by training, he has spent many years climbing the rungs of the communist party and is a relative youthful 60.
Reports that he could turn on the charm turned out to be unfounded when he came up with a rather stodgy and humourless performance at a banquet meeting Wednesday night. According to one account, asked about the challenge of unemployment in China, he launched into a 15-minute disquisition on farming, urbanization and labour policies sounding more like a policy expert than a politician.
But the Bush administration and Washington's large pro-China constituency treated him reverentially despite the chronicle of several Chinese No 2 never making it to the top (they are sometimes described in China as "living with the tiger."). Such ritual obeisance to Chinese leadership on the basis of its opacity irks some experts who feel their powers are overstated.
"This intense focus on Hu's personality doesn't make sense. Why do we so often make the mistake of over-personalising Chinese politics, exaggerating the importance of a single individual while underestimating the power and tenacity of other party leaders?" a former Beijing-based correspondent and sinologist wrote in one commentary.
"Yet diplomats, intelligence officials and China experts will scrutinise Hu's every word, however colourless, and his every facial expression, however impassive," he said.
From all accounts Hu was (colourless and impassive), and they did (parse every word and expression).
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