Asia Sentinel

Translation of a blog post by Lipuman (李普曼) entitled “Obama’s Q & A Session - A Mythical Tale”.

Here is my translation of the blog post:-

“While my ears tuned in to the simultaneous interpretation from the White House’s official web video, my eyes were glued to the on-and-off stealthy direct broadcasting by Phoenix TV. When the two little words ‘firewall’ and ‘Twitter’ hit my ears, I was emotionally excited. I almost cried out aloud: ‘They’re asking Obama the firewall question!’

My colleagues’ first reaction was: Is this real or unreal?

This was in truth something that was outside of our expectations. We may have imagined that this Q & A session between Obama and Shanghai students would probably bring a few surprises in Obama’s answers. Never had we expected that such a maverick question would be put forward. Yet Obama’s answer was quite beside the point.

This question was selected by Ambassador Huntsman from amongst those posed by netizens. According to the Xinhua web record, the question was like this:-

‘Huntsman asked on behalf of netizens: Firstly, in a country with so great a number of internet users and with 60 million bloggers, do you know anything about the firewall? Secondly, should we be able to freely use Twitter?’

This was the only one maverick question during the whole Q & A session. But obviously Obama did not answer well. Of course, the truth could be that he did not want to answer well.

In his reply, he only emphasized how the United States ensures the free flow of information and, using his own personal example, cited the benefits of freedom of information. But he did not give a straight answer to the question. When I was listening to his answer, I had a thought that his answer would be better targeted at Hu Jintao, telling him that by ensuring the free flow of information, he would in fact be ensuring the stability of his rule. But to an ordinary Chinese netizen, his answer was stereotype.

Of course from the pragmatic viewpoint, this answer of Obama’s, including the question posed by Ambassador Huntsman, was not meant for the Chinese people – it was meant for the Americans.

With his pragmatic foreign policy, and faced with ever deepening Sino-American trade ties and the increasingly crucial role played by China in regional affairs, Obama has no alternative but to work hard to improve relations with China. On the other hand, being influenced and pressured by American people’s insistence on upholding universal values and ideology-based diplomacy, he cannot but continue to reiterate his attitude and standpoint on issues like human rights and freedoms.

Therefore, on his China trip, he has to tread carefully in order not to hurt the feelings of the Chinese leaders, thus avoiding to publicly address those issues. At the same time he has to show his voters that he would not sacrifice their values and beliefs in exchange for economic benefits.

That is why when the questions posed by the university students  (in fact it was subsequently discovered that not all participants are students, at least two of them are high school teachers) proved to be banal questions, Ambassador Huntsman came to the rescue and selected this one and only audacious question from amongst the netizens.

It should not be difficult for Huntsman to pick up the question, as the website specifically set up by the State Department has been filled with netizens’ complaints about the firewall and their calls for Obama to apply pressure on the Chinese government. But the question was how to walk the thin line between not pissing off the Chinese government and pacifying the Chinese netizens.

My personal guess is that the Americans will definitely have a dialogue with the Chinese side on the issue, because otherwise state media Xinhua would not have published without hesitation the transcript of the Q & A session as soon as the question was posed – without the approval of the top brass, Xinhua’s editors would not have been able to publish it so quickly.

In Obama’s reply, by focusing on the American values and beliefs, he was able to please his voters as well as the conservatives.

So, it seems that my initial exclamation was after all unnecessary. The event was from the outset a presidential image publicity campaign orchestrated by the Obama team – it did not include the pressuring tactics that we had anticipated.

As for the hundreds of university students, I would imagine that they have 20 to 30 years of experience as CCP members – they have been true socialists since their birth. If one expects that Obama’s one-hour watered-down speech can change their value views, it is nothing short of a mythical tale.”

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form

Write comment

Name

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment