My reflections on Hu Jintao's visit to Washington, DC this past week

My reflections - I did not see much in the newspapers in the week or two before Hu Jintao's visit. I was somewhat surprised not to see much. The only thing I saw of note was a Washington Post article five days before talking about Obama meeting with five Chinese American human rights people at the White House – which I thought was an odd way for the Obama Administration to get ready for the visit. It seemed that this focus on human rights was for domestic consumption – and was meant to pave the way for the fact that it was a State Dinner – first one in several decades.

Once Hu Jintao's visit started – things seem to go quite well. The trade agreement of US exports of $45 billion impressed people. Most people I know thought the visit went well.

I was somewhat surprised to not see many comments that got the Chinese perspective across. I didn't see much effort on Americans to understand where the Chinese are coming from. The McNeil Lehrer segment on PBS with David Shambaugh and Susan Shirk and one Chinese professor from California was an intelligent discussion. And Fareed Zakaria’s show – “GPS” – today Sunday 1/23 – had some very good comments in it – from Henry Kissinger and particularly from Zbigniew Bzezinski (sic). One comment from Zbigniew was interesting was “the US and China are a contrast of styles - we short history, they long history…”

The reception on Capitol Hill the day after the State Dinner seemed a bit odd to me – with Congressmen trying to play to their local constituents. I hear that the Speaker of the House did not come to the State Dinner as a form of protest - Republican John Boehner I assume. This seems to be odd behavior - playing to his Ohio constituents. In general the House seemed to focus on the fact that Americans are getting used to having less prosperity - and THEY DON'T LIKE IT! It just happens that China is the rising power - so Americans are mad at China for taking jobs. But the fact is that as Fareed Zacaria said in his book, "The Post American Era" - the US has to start to get used to less prosperity, less dynamic growth - at least for the short to mid term.
I see tensions between US and China happening largely around both countries need to create jobs for its citizens. I believe a joint NGO for job creation in each country could lessen tensions. In general – I believe that China could help communicate that a country with 1.3 billion people can not necessarily be governed as a country with 300 million people. Democracies are hard enough to get going in countries of 100 to 300 million people – but very hard to develop in countries larger than that – other than India and the democratic tendencies that the British brought to India over many many decades. And India’s democracy is not that necessarily enviable to China – with the counter-productive bickering of various factions that has slowed the Indian economy down. China should strive to communicate that it has cultural differences from Western countries – and to help Western countries GET INSIDE WHAT THESE DIFFERENCES ARE – so the US does not just evaluate China on the moral standards prevalent in the US today. I do believe that China should very gradually move toward democracy – in a stable, intelligent and measured way. The flourishing of the Chinese people’s potential is amazing – and will continue strongly going forward. The more the rest of the world gets to know China and its people for who they really are – and not for platitudes that inaccurately sum up a country of 1.3 billion people – the better off all the citizens of this planet will be.