By Daniel Dombey, US Diplomatic Correspondent
By Mure Dickie, Japan bureau chief
Barack Obama’s critics will no doubt see it as a metaphor. During his recent visit to Tokyo, the US president bowed so low to Japan’s Emperor Akihito that some people wondered if he had spotted a Y100 coin on the Imperial Palace’s immaculately swept porch.
In sharp contrast, Xi Jinping, Chinese vice president and Communist party heir apparent, yesterday merely granted his royal highness the merest of nods.
While Obama’s defenders told critics such as Rush Limbaugh that he was merely showing respect for local customs and – as a notably tall man – seeking to get down to the more diminutive emperor’s level. But when it comes to protocol, Xi – himself a man of impressive height – was closer to the orthodox light-dip-of-head and handshake combo recommended by experts.
Yet maybe Xi would have been better to borrow the Obama approach. Local coverage of the vice president’s visit to Japan has been dominated by controversy over the new Democratic party-led government’s decision to, er, bow to Beijing’s request for the imperial audience even though the Chinese had failed to ask for it the regulation month in advance.
The sense that Beijing was pushing for – and getting – special treatment will be seized on as ammunition by those in Japan and elsewhere who believe the new DPJ government is too keen to snuggle up to its rising neighbour, and by those that think that China is growing too willing to throw its weight around in the region.
Indeed, in a press conference at the Japan Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Monday, Tsai Ing-wen, the visiting leader of feisty Taiwan’s main opposition Democratic Progressive party, warned that Beijing’s insistence on the imperial encounter was just the latest example of its growing willingness to “flex muscles”.
Asian democracies should stand together to manage an increasingly powerful but still authoritarian regime, she said. “China has to learn to respect other people’s sovereignty (and) other people’s protocol and traditions.”
By Geoff Dyer, FT China bureau chief
Barack Obama made one last final attempt to speak directly to ordinary Chinese people at the end of his three-day visit, giving an interview in Beijing yesterday to Southern Weekend, one of China’s more outspoken newspapers.
Yet even that small gesture seems to have led to some minor skirmishes with the Chinese authorities, which managed to keep Obama on a fairly tight rein during his visit.
When the morning paper was delivered to lots of offices in central Beijing – including several buildings that house many foreign news organizations – it did not contain the section with the interview, even though the full newspaper with interview was available on many newsstands and on the internet here. After a call to the distributor, the section of Southern Weekend with the interview appeared mid-afternoon in the FT’s mail box.
The article itself raised some suspicions because it is relatively small and is almost drowned out by a large advertisement occupying more than half the page, which a source familiar with the matter said was inserted very late in the day. But there are no signs of censorship – the transcript released by the White House is identical to the published Q&A.
Obama did not say anything that would attract the censor’s ire. He called on China to “take on more responsibilities” – one of his main themes for the visit – and said that Washington would review the ban on hi-tech exports to China. And he told the interviewer he wanted to meet Chinese and Houston Rockets basketball star Yao Ming.
By Zach Coleman, FT Asia world news editor
Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president, may have looked like he was bulking up ahead of Barack Obama’s first presidential visit to Seoul this week when he sported a sweater under his suit jacket.
In fact, Lee and his cabinet – who joined him adding some layers of protection – were trying to lead by example as they committed the country to cut its carbon emissions in a symbolically under-heated meeting room during a cold snap.
How Seoul will reduce emissions by four per cent from 2005 levels by 2020 has not yet been spelled out. But the track record of other leaders using sartorial gestures to promote energy conservation has been mixed.
Months after becoming US president, Jimmy Carter donned a cardigan to underscore that the energy crisis was the “moral equivalent of war”. Carter hoped to summon public solidarity to conserve energy and reduce oil imports through steps such as reducing wintertime heating and driving more efficent cars.
But in the heyday of the Pontiac TransAm, his plea for sacrifice didn’t resonate with the American public (how would Hummer owners react now?). Oil imports continued to climb and Carter was eventually sent packing by the sunnier optimism of Ronald Reagan.
By Geoff Dyer, FT China bureau chief
Have we just watched the launch of the G2? As Barack Obama has said several times this week, there are few big global problems that can be solved without the agreement of the US and China. And talking in terms of a G2 captures some of the shifting balance of global power where a wounded US is seeking to find common cause with a rising China.
Yet there is only one main problem with the idea. No one actually wants a G2.
Let’s start with the people who really, really do not want a G2. Europe hates the idea because it would cement its declining relevance on the world stage. India, Brazil & Co see it as a challenge to their own global superpower aspirations.
Then there are the Chinese. The idea is flattering of course, especially to a people with such an in-built sense of being at the centre of the world.
But a real G2, where the US-China relationship acts as a clearing house for thorny international issues, would come with all sorts of leadership obligations which China is quite happy to let others (the US) fulfil.
And what of the US? Well, if the Obama visit has shown anything, it is that China does not give much away in these sorts of bilateral summits. More sanctions for Iran, more help in Afghanistan, a stronger currency? Thanks, but no thanks.
As Elizabeth Economy and Adam Segal argued in this perceptive piece earlier in the year, the US can exert much more pressure on China through multilateral approaches (i.e. ganging up with other countries) than through one-on-one meetings.
That leaves the only supporters of the G2 as us folks in the news media, for whom such a simple label for a complex reality is too irresistible.
By Mure Dickie, FT Tokyo bureau chief
The depth of Barack Obama’s pavement-scraping bow to Japan’s Emperor Akihito last weekend has become a matter of controversy at home drawing individous comparisons with the upright Dick Cheney (see this Los Angeles Times blog).
So here’s my verdict on the president’s protocol performance.
First off, Obama definitely wins some credit for being so obviously keen to show respect for local feelings. This is an important message to convey given that his administration has been rather brusquely waving aside calls by Japan’s new government for a rethink on a controversial Marine base relocation plan.
Like people everywhere, the Japanese appreciate when visitors abide by the old injunction to “follow village ways when in the village” (the local equivalent of “When in Rome…”). And bowing is very much a part of Japanese etiquette.
By Geoff Dyer, FT China bureau chief
Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to ordinary Chinese on his Asia tour may have fallen a little flat, but there is one trump card he can play to score points with his hosts – the three members of Obama’s Cabinet who can get by in Chinese.
Two are Chinese-Americans, commerce secretary Gary Locke and energy secretary Steven Chu, both of whom are with the president in Beijing.
Locke did not learn English until he went to kindergarten, although he admits that he has lost some of his Chinese language skills since he was a kid.
Nobel-prize winner Chu did not really learn Chinese as a child, but has tried to study as an adult. And then there is Tim Geithner at Treasury who spent a couple of summers studying Chinese at universities in Beijing.
In Chinese financial circles, there are any number of people with immaculate English, but the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist party are not quite such a cosmopolitan bunch – the Cultural Revolution cut off educational opportunities for many of them.
Only one member of the current Politburo finished a university course abroad, vice premier Zhang Dejiang.
And Zhang did not exactly spend lazy days at the Sorbonne – he has an economics degree from the Kim Il Sung university in North Korea. I wonder if his course covered ‘global imbalances’?
By Christian Oliver, FT South Korea bureau chief
Seoul’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper last week speculated on the most important question surrounding the South Korea leg of Barack Obama’s Asia tour: whether the presidential lunch would be accompanied by Korean rice liquor, or a fruity Californian red?
On the eve of Mr Obama’s arrival in Seoul on Wednesay, officials said it would most likely be an American wine. The South Koreans probably intend those bottles of Californian wine to deliver a none-too-subtle message about the importance of a trade agreement between Washington and Seoul, currently held up mainly by resistance from US automakers.
But that bottle – Zinfandel? – could also raise deeper questions about trade deals with South Korea.
By Edward Luce, FT Washington bureau chief, travelling with President Barack Obama in Shanghai
From a distance, global diplomacy can appear more glamourous than it sometimes is. On Monday, in a very rainy and overcast Shanghai, Barack Obama could be forgiven for wishing he was elsewhere. His first public event of the day was a meeting with Yu Zhengsheng, the city’s Communist party secretary.
After the presidential motorcade sped along Shanghai’s eerily empty streets and seemingly endless urban jungle of skyscrapers, Mr Obama sat down to what might politely be described as a ponderous exchange of pleasantries with Mr Yu.
The US president was not alone. Among the other American officials seated in a line of chairs next to Mr Obama were Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, Jim Jones, the national security advisor, Lawrence Summers, White House senior economic advisor, and Kurt Campbell, the state department’s Asia man.
“Thank you so much for your hospitality,” said Mr Obama. “This is my first visit to Shanghai.”
“Shanghai is a city that witnessed the progress of the diplomatic relations between China and the United States over the past three decades,” Mr Yu shot back.
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.
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