The World

By Geoff Dyer, FT China bureau chief

If the White House believes President Barack Obama’s charisma can be a foreign policy asset, that theory is about to face its toughest test in China where he arrives on Sunday night, the latest stop in his inaugural Asia tour.

Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, China has been immune to the popular love-in that surrounded the Obama election. For sure, young Chinese like the president – they think he is cool and they understand the symbolism of an African-American in the White House. But they have not been caught up in the hero-worship witnessed in, say, parts of Europe.

After their own experience with Mao’s cult of personality, Chinese these days are pretty suspicious of politicians with a saintly air. Indeed, around Beijing in recent days, there have been T-shirts for sale with an image of Obama wearing a Mao suit.

China was also one of the few places in the world that was quite happy with George W. Bush. Obama’s fans in Europe were counting down the days until Bush left office, but in China there was none of that ecstatic sense of relief.

And maybe it is just because Obama simply does not have the same profile in Chinese media that he enjoys elsewhere. Obama made his major Asia speech on Saturday where he pledged that the US would not try to contain China, yet on the main CCTV news programme that night he did not get a mention until a full 27 minutes into the broadcast.

Obama’s speech followed three separate stories on President Hu Jintao’s meetings of the day and a long profile of a model policeman in a rural area of eastern China who seemed to spend most of his time helping old women husk their winter corn.