MCLC: Xi Jinping ends tours on friendly note

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Xi Jinping ends tour on friendly note
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Source: NYT (2/17/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/world/asia/chinese-vice-president-xi-jinp
ing-tours-los-angeles-port.html

Chinese Vice President Ends U.S. Tour on Friendly Note
By EDWARD WONGPublished: February 17, 2012

LOS ANGELES ‹ Vice President Xi Jinping of China wrapped up a carefully
scripted cross-country tour of the United States on Friday having tried to
cast himself not just as a fitting leader to follow President Hu Jintao,
as he almost certainly will this fall, but as an unusually approachable
one as well.

It was a performance aimed both at an American audience whose skepticism
toward China has been compounded by election-year language, and at an
audience back home whose cynicism toward its Communist rulers can also run
deep.

Mr. Hu, China¹s wooden and distant leader over the last decade, has left
many Chinese more comfortable economically, but also more removed from a
party and leadership that seem to have little to do with their lives. Mr.
Xi ‹ the joke-cracking, farm-visiting, 58-year-old statesman who told a
classroom filled with students on Friday that he likes to hit the pool for
a swim ‹ presents a sharp contrast to Mr. Hu.

Whether a leader with a different image will translate into better
relations with the United States and to changes in China, though, remains
as much a mystery at the end of Mr. Xi¹s trip as it was before he arrived.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said he had spent more than 20
hours in relatively private talks with Mr. Xi during this trip and a
similar one that Mr. Biden made to China in August, would not speculate on
how his visitor¹s openness might translate to policy-making. But he said
that in their personal conversations, Mr. Xi ³has been very frank about
the economic and political dilemma he faces in China.²

He said he found Mr. Xi ³very, very direct,² adding: ³He¹s absolutely
responsive. When we disagree, it¹s a clear statement of disagreement.²

Mr. Xi buffed his regular-guy image on Friday with a visit to the
International Studies Learning Center in the town of South Gate, Calif.,
just southeast of Los Angeles. Responding to a high school student¹s
question during a classroom visit, he said that he likes to read, swim
(his favorite sport) and watch American basketball, baseball and football.

³Of course we always want more time to ourselves,² Mr. Xi said in
Mandarin, the language the class was studying. ³But to borrow a title from
an American film, it¹s like ŒMission: Impossible.¹ ³ The room broke up in
laughter.

Many senior Chinese officials, especially Mr. Hu, are known for trying to
maintain a distance between themselves and ordinary citizens, which often
infuriates those they govern and leads to the Internet vilification of
politicians. But Mr. Xi appeared confident and at ease in settings like
the one at the South Gate school, at a Los Angeles Lakers game on Friday
night and during a midweek stop in Muscatine, Iowa, where he met with
Americans who had been his hosts there 27 years earlier when he was part
of a delegation looking at pig-farming techniques.

Mr. Xi¹s trip, with its tone of camaraderie, also had a message for
Americans at a time of growing unease in Washington over China¹s economic
and military rise. The tensions have been fueled in part by strident
public speeches against Chinese policies given by Republican presidential
candidates and by President Obama, who have their eyes on the 2012
election.

Mr. Biden told reporters after the school visit that he saw in Mr. Xi a
Chinese leader with a distinctive style.

³This is unusual for any foreign leader, in particular for a Chinese
foreign leader, to want to expose himself this much to the American
public,² Mr. Biden said. ³His going back to Muscatine was not my idea. It
was our idea to do many other things. But this is a guy who wants to feel
it and taste it, and he¹s prepared to show another side of the Chinese
leadership that could be useful for Americans to see as well.²

Mr. Biden said that Mr. Xi also seemed to want to learn everything he
could about the American political system. On Tuesday night, after Mr. Xi
and Mr. Biden finished dinner at the Naval Observatory, Mr. Biden¹s home
in Washington, the two sat in the library and, as Mr. Biden recounted it,
talked about individual members of Congress, with Mr. Xi asking about the
motivations behind some lawmakers¹ actions.

Mr. Xi has long stressed aspects of his personal background that show that
he can connect with a range of people. He has written about his years
toiling in the village of Liangjiahe in Shaanxi Province during the
Cultural Revolution. He has also boasted of traveling to every county in
Zhejiang Province when he was its top party official.

On Friday, he seemed keen to tell the students about the connection he had
made with Americans in his 1985 visit to Iowa. ³That trip to the United
States was the first trip I made to this country,² he said. ³If anything,
my trip back to Muscatine the other day reinforced my impressions of 27
years ago.²

But Mr. Xi may be engaging in mythmaking. Nicholas Platt, a senior
American diplomat, said in a telephone interview on Friday that Mr. Xi had
visited Washington in 1980 as part of a delegation led by Geng Biao, a top
Chinese general. Mr. Xi was the general¹s aide. ³He wasn¹t on protocol
lists,² said Mr. Platt, who organized the general¹s visit. ³To the best of
my knowledge, based on a reliable source, that was his first trip to the
U.S.²

Jin Zhong, a magazine editor in Hong Kong who has researched Mr. Xi, also
said in an earlier interview that Mr. Xi had traveled with General Geng to
Washington in 1980.

Mr. Xi was on a different mission this time. Business deals were announced
on Friday, including one between Chinese companies and DreamWorks
Animation, the American film company, at an economic forum that Mr. Xi
attended before the school visit. And in the afternoon in Los Angeles, Mr.
Xi was led on a tour of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank
Gehry, by Mr. Gehry himself.

Mr. Xi is not the first Chinese leader to engage in image-polishing on an
American visit. Deng Xiaoping caused a sensation in 1979 when he donned a
10-gallon cowboy hat during a visit to Texas. On a state visit in 1997,
Mr. Hu¹s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, rang the opening bell at the New York
Stock Exchange. Appearing on a ³60 Minutes² segment taped in China in
2000, he recited part of the Gettysburg Address in English.

Both men raised hopes for better cooperation with Washington. But behind
their images and push for economic reforms, both were also thoroughly
authoritarian. And while economic ties with the United States improved
steadily under their watches, the basic differences separating the two
powers remained.