Xi Jinping Kanye West Funny Face
The good news from Xi Jinping's world tour was that there was no news
Full Comment's Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: The voyage of China's newest leader in waiting was designed as much for the folks back home as it was for the rest of the world.
Xi Jinping, the putative successor to President Hu Jintao, wrapped up his international trip this week in Turkey, after visits to the U.S. and Ireland.
Thanks to Beijing's habitual opacity over its leaders, he is as little known to the people he will govern as he is to the foreign governments who will have to deal with his policies.Expectations therefore were both high and low. High that Xi would show he is presidential material, while not committing China to any particular policy. Low that there would be no loss of face as he inspected cattle and honour guards with equal aplomb.
As June Teufel Dreyer, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, observed, "The fact that there was no story is in itself a story."
Reporting for the Sydney Morning Herald, Keith Richburg believes the visit was a hit.
The week-long trip of the Vice-President of China, Xi Jinping, to the United States, covered in minute detail in the official media at home, offered the first extended chance for the Chinese public to size up the man tapped to be their next leader. And judging from the initial reviews, Mr Xi is proving a surprise hit with ordinary people. Comments posted on the popular microblogging sites known as weibo — as good a barometer of sentiment as exists in China — suggest that Mr Xi has struck a chord by using the everyday language of most Chinese and sprinkling his speeches with common cultural references, including a line from a pop song and an advertising jingle.
In a triple-bylined piece in The World Street Journal, Jeremy Page, Nathan Hodge and Brian Spegele write,
Mr. Xi's relative candour and self-assured demeanor have come as a stark contrast with the man he is expected to succeed, current President Hu Jintao, who has often seemed awkward in public and struggled to strike a personal rapport with foreign or domestic audiences. Chinese and U.S. officials hope Mr. Xi's personal affinity to the U.S. will bolster trust between the world's two biggest economies, even as their national interests likely to increasingly come into conflict over the next decade … For some U.S. experts, however, Mr. Xi's visit was short on substance. Mr. Xi managed to avoid making gaffes; hecklers or protesters did not disrupt high-profile events despite repeated demonstrations by Tibetan activists; and U.S. and Chinese officials kept any sharp discussions behind closed doors.
At NBC News, the Beijing-based Ed Flanagan studies the coverage in Chinese media to come to the conclusion:
[T]he Chinese press assessment was startlingly similar to American coverage: long on diplomatic niceties, short on any serious policy. In other words, a great success for the apparent heir to the Chinese presidency.
On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the China Post's Frank Ching wasn't holding his breath.
As expected, the visit to the United States by China's leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, did not result in any policy breakthroughs — he is, after all, only the crown prince and has not yet been anointed as No. 1 … The Obama administration went out of its way to honour China's next leader, according him a lengthy audience with the president while giving him an elaborate reception at the State Department and a 19-gun salute at the Pentagon. Xi certainly noticed these gestures. And, it is hoped, when he is China's leader, he will remember the warmth of his reception when dealing with the United States.
In an op-ed piece for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman says Xi represents a new breed of Chinese leader.
When Xi and the other members of the new Politburo — the Fifth Generation, as its known — take power this fall, they will be the first Chinese leaders not handpicked by Mao or Deng. That creates, in theory, the possibility that they will push for faster political changes, but it also constrains their ability to do so. When Xi was elected to the Party Central Committee, in 1997, he finished dead last of the 357 members and alternates of the Party Central Committee, because people resented men like him who grew up with the privileges and Party pedigree bestowed by famous fathers. All of this matters when we ask what kind of leader Xi will, and can, be. He has the background of a leader who realizes that China must undertake real political reform or face an existential threat from the dissatisfaction of its own people — that it will never achieve the soft power it covets as long as it locks up dissidents and broadcasts propaganda.
compiled by Araminta Wordsworth
awordsworth@nationalpost.com
Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-good-news-from-xis-tour-was-that-there-was-no-news
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