OBAMA IN NIXON’S FOOTSTEPS AT GREAT WALL
Barack Obama on Wednesday made an obligatory stop at the Great Wall of China at the close of a three-day visit in which he also bumped against the “great firewall” of China.
Much like Richard Nixon, the president who first travelled behind the “bamboo curtain” in 1972 and helped set US-China relations on the road to normalisation, the sight of the snaking 2,000-year-old stone wall failed to elicit Mr Obama’s most memorable words.
Mr Nixon famously said: “I think you would have to conclude that this is a great wall.” America’s 37th president went on to say: “… and it must have been built by a great people”. Much to Mr Nixon’s chagrin, the media only quoted the first half of that sentence.
Initially, President Obama repeated the same superlative he had used on Tuesday when visiting the Forbidden City and described the wall as “spectacular”.
But on being pressed by reporters on Wednesday, Mr Obama said: “It’s (the wall is) a reminder of the ancient history of the Chinese people.”
America’s 44th president, dressed in a black leather jacket and no hat in spite of the sub-zero temperature, then paused and added reflectively: “It gives you a good perspective on a lot of the day-to-day things. They don’t amount to much in the scope of history.”
One such day-to-day thing might have been the White House’s wounded response to the US media’s sardonic coverage of Mr Obama’s “town hall” event in Shanghai on Monday in which he took questions from Chinese students.
In spite of vigorous White House lobbying, the Chinese authorities refused to broadcast the event live on national television. Many of China’s internet users also reported difficulty in accessing the White House website, which theoretically made the streaming broadcast available to all of China’s 350m online subscribers.
US officials were incensed the US media chose to emphasise the “great firewall” aspect of the event rather than the fact this was the first time a president had been able to use such a platform in China, or that Mr Obama used the occasion to hammer home the pitfalls of internet censorship – though without mentioning China directly.
Some officials even privately suggested that China’s decision to minimise viewership was motivated by anxiety over the potential appeal of a young politician who came from nowhere to take the White House, partly on the back of his skill at appealing to the nation’s youth via the internet.
Either way, Mr Obama on Wednesday appeared to be focused on the larger view of his visit to China – the first time a US president has visited the world’s most populous country within a year of taking office.
After his concluding meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, Mr Obama told Wen Jiabao, China’s premier: “A relationship that used to be focused just on economic and trade issues is now expanding to deal with a whole host of global issues in which US-China co-operation is critical.”
Clearly flattered at having hosted a US president who sought to recognise and make use of China’s return to great power status, Mr Wen said: ”We are really on the cusp of moving forward with this relationship.”
A couple of hours later, having concluded his 50-minute tour of the Great Wall, a Chinese journalist asked Mr Obama what he brought with him from the US to China.
At first misunderstanding the question, the president then got the meaning and gamely replied: “I bring a great admiration for Chinese civilisation and I bring greetings from the American people.”
Richard Nixon could not have put it better himself.
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