BEIJING — President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu
Jintao will meet Tuesday to talk privately about issues ranging from North
Korea’s nuclear threat to currency and trade disputes. U.S. policy advocates
also expect the leaders to announce new joint projects on clean energy.
On the first full day of Obama’s visit to the world’s
largest nation, the president mixed substance with fun stuff: a tour to the
Forbidden City and a state dinner. He plans to see the Great Wall on Wednesday
and visit officials and U.S. troops in South Korea on Thursday before returning
home.
On Monday, Obama used his first public appearance in China —
a town hall meeting in Shanghai — to court China’s Internet users and
intellectuals, prodding the Chinese government to end its censorship policy.
“I’m a big supporter of noncensorship,” Obama
said.
If Obama’s remarks made Hu uneasy, they appeared to fall
short of creating a diplomatic setback.
Obama and Hu hoped to be able to announce some areas of
mutual advancement Tuesday, scheduling a midday joint appearance. Other topics
they were expected to discuss included terrorism and militarization, the global
economic crisis, the U.S. war in Afghanistan, global warming, China’s control
of Tibet, and human rights and democracy.
After flying from Shanghai to Beijing, Obama was greeted on
the tarmac with a red carpet, a visit from China’s vice president, a girl
holding flowers and an honor guard.
In the evening, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
and other top administration officials were Hu’s guests at a 90-minute dinner
that included prawns, soup, lamb chops and a demonstration for the Americans on
Chinese noodle-making.
The motorcade from Obama’s hotel to the ornate Diaoyutai
State Guesthouse took the American president along Chang An Jie, the Avenue Of
Eternal Peace.
For Obama, who hadn’t been to China before, this meant a
first-time in-person glimpse of Tiananmen Square on his left, 20 years after
the student pro-democracy protests were put down by the government with deadly
force; and, on his right, the gates to the Forbidden City, the palace of
China’s emperors, built before Columbus discovered America.
Obama and Hu spoke informally over dinner about the
histories of both countries and their evolving relationship, and touched on the
economy and education, but saved the official agenda for Tuesday’s meetings,
National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones said. Jones attended the dinner,
which was closed to the news media.
At the town hall in Shanghai’s Science and Technology
Museum, Obama took eight questions. The most politically edgy one, submitted to
the U.S. Embassy via the Internet, asked whether he was familiar with the
Chinese Internet firewall and whether he thought Chinese should have the right
to use Twitter freely.
“I think that the more freely information flows, the
stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the
world can then hold their own governments accountable,” the president told
the audience of about 400 hand-picked university students.
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Obama hoped to reach a much broader audience of Chinese, who
have the largest Internet population and the largest number of cell phone users
of any nation. It wasn’t immediately clear, however, how many of China’s 1.3
billion people had access to his full remarks. The Chinese government agreed to
broadcast the forum on Shanghai television but not nationally. The official
state news agency, Xinhua, carried the text of Obama’s remarks on its Web site,
including the portions related to censorship.
The Chinese government limits access to social networking
sites, however, and has a history of cutting remarks it considers destabilizing
from broadcasts or news accounts. A portion of Obama’s inaugural address last
January was blocked in China. In addition, what’s known as “the great
firewall of China” is a state system of tight Internet controls that block
any number of sites and Web traffic.
“In the United States, the fact that we have
unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be
encouraged,” Obama said.
He admitted to moments “where I wish information didn’t
flow so freely, because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticize me
all the time.” However, he said, “I actually think that makes our
democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader, because it forces me to
hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”
Obama also told the Chinese that in modern times, power
“is no longer a zero-sum game.”
“We do not seek to contain China’s rise,” he said
He said that the U.S. shouldn’t impose its own system of
governance on other countries but that some values should be universal.
He recalled the past four decades of U.S.-China diplomacy:
table tennis, President Richard Nixon’s historic visit, the establishment of
formal relations during the Cold War 30 years ago and the evolution of the
relationship in terms of trade and the economy in recent years.
Obama said that the greatest threats to national security
today remained terrorist networks such as al-Qaida, and that it was important
to stabilize Afghanistan.
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
