The World

By Geoff Dyer, FT China bureau chief

This, I suspect, will not end well.

Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, was asked this afternoon how China would view a meeting between Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama. Here is his response:

“He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln’s major significance for that movement. Lincoln played an incomparable role in protecting the national unity and territorial integrity of the United States.”

Calling the Dalai Lama “the ringleader of feudal serf system”, he added:

“In 1959, China abolished the feudal serf system just as President Lincoln freed the black slaves. So we hope President Obama more than any other foreign leader can have a better understanding on China’s position on opposing the Dalai’s splittist activities.”

Leaving history aside for now, it is worth asking if this is really the fight China wants to pick three days before President Obama arrives in China for the first time. There are around 150 reporters travelling with Obama and before long, one of them will ask if he thinks granting greater autonomy to Tibet is the moral equivalent of the south winning the civil war. Whatever his answer, there is a good chance of several days of recriminations and people shouting past each other about the real history of Tibet.

The spin ahead of Obama’s China visit has been that the two countries now have a relationship that is deep and broad enough to cope with minor disputes. If you want to put that new sense of partnership to the test, a good way to start is to construct a sentence containing the words ‘black president’, ‘Dalai Lama’ and ‘slavery’.