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May 24, 2013
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 Pay Close Attention to ChinaPosted on Feb 17, 2012China, for better or worse, is a serious country. The United States had better start acting like one. I got a glimpse of the future Wednesday in the vast ballroom of a Washington hotel where hundreds of august dignitaries—and some journalists as well—gathered at a luncheon in honor of Vice President Xi Jinping, who is widely expected to become China’s top leader after a year-long transition. Xi’s status is such that he was introduced by no less than Henry Kissinger, who spoke, not for the first time, of the Nixon-to-China breakthrough four decades ago. It is useful to remember that the country we now think of as a trillion-dollar creditor and the manufacturer of iPads was once a Maoist bastion, hermetically sealed against the capitalist influences of the Western world. Let me interject that this column will include quite a few Chinese names, which can be hard for English-speaking readers to follow. Please make the effort. Being an informed citizen of the world is increasingly going to require some level of comfort with Chinese nomenclature. Xi’s father—Xi Zhongxun, once one of Mao Zedong’s lieutenants—fell out of favor and was persecuted during much of that era. Xi Jinping is part of a remarkable generation that survived the apocalypse of the Cultural Revolution; he spent long, hard years as a teenager living in a cave in the poor, remote Shaanxi province. Advertisement I recount this history because it helps me understand why the men—and a few women—now running China are the way they are: impatient to make up for lost time, pathologically wary of the slightest instability, tough, resourceful, adaptable, coldly unsentimental and, as Kissinger generalized in his introduction, convinced “that every solution is the beginning of a new set of problems.” The speech Xi delivered at the luncheon was fairly stilted and anodyne, as one might have expected. He’s not president yet, and clearly he was intent on not making headline news. China wants a “cooperative partnership” with the United States, he said, adding that his meetings with President Obama and Vice President Biden were “fruitful.” There was an overall message, however. Xi referred to the U.S.-China relationship as “an unstoppable river that keeps surging ahead.” He was pointing out the obvious: For decades to come, the United States and China will be the world’s two biggest economic powers. We’re stuck with each other, like it or not. China is a one-party state, but that does not mean there is no debate about the country’s direction. Xi is considered likely to keep the nation on its current path of free-market economic growth. His political adversary Bo Xilai advocates a more robust safety net to care for the millions who are being left out of the Chinese economic miracle. There are also internal disagreements about how aggressive China should be in asserting its military influence throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea. Addressing the environmental cost of the country’s rapid development will be an urgent task for the incoming leadership. China’s record on human rights and political openness is still abysmal. These are serious questions—but Chinese leaders at least are grappling with them in a serious manner. But here in the United States? “We’re having the most frivolous of conversations—in an election year!” This assessment came from Jon Huntsman, the former ambassador to China who recently ended his bid for the GOP presidential nomination, and who attended the lunch for Xi. We hear a lot of China-bashing on the campaign trail. Yes, there’s plenty to criticize—currency manipulation, intellectual piracy, the appalling veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the ouster of the murderous Assad regime in Syria. What we’re not hearing is a serious debate about farsighted reforms that are needed to keep the United States from falling behind. If we are to thrive in a changing world, singing “America the Beautiful” isn’t enough.
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By sofianitz, February 18, 2012 at 9:44 am Link to this comment
Look out for how Robinson throws hat zinger in there in the penultimate paragraph about the “murderous Assad regime in Syria”. this is planted not-so-subtle propaganda, about as false as you can get. Syria is under attack from southern Turkey financed by the Arab League countries, fronted by NATO unmarked supply planes, Franch and British SpecialOps, and CIA and US SpecOps aerial surveillance and logistics, battle planning. Believe me, this has nothing to do with “murderous regimes” or “human rights”.
Report thisBy james nelson, February 17, 2012 at 7:05 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
It is interesting that this article is dated the 17th of February. One wonders if the author is aware of the developments regarding Bo Xilai.
Report thisSee: http://sansculottism.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/bo-xilai-in-trouble/
By Aarky, February 17, 2012 at 2:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Paul Robertts did such an excellent job of pointing out the grand Chutzpah and hypocrisy of the Obama administration that all I can suggest is that the only thing left for the US is to attack China to force them to be nice to all their people.
Report thisBy boston blackie, February 17, 2012 at 12:12 pm Link to this comment
How ironic that Xi is introduced by that other human rights advocate, Henry Kissinger! Excellent article by Paul Craig Roberts.
Report thisBy balkas, February 17, 2012 at 7:46 am Link to this comment
“murderous assad regime”? how about not vetoing invasion to end
Report thismurderous obama, netanyahoo, cameron regimes?
By Big B, February 17, 2012 at 7:18 am Link to this comment
Well said FRTothus.
Our hate for the chinese seems to be centered on the one thing that we in the imperial west just cannot grasp, that war is bad for business.
As oil supplies and fresh water start to dwindle in the next 10 to 20 years, I feel certain that they will see a need to expand their military infrastructure a bit.
The 21st century resource wars have just begun. Better to plant a “victory” garden, dig a sistern, and build a windmill. Its not going to be pretty.
Report thisBy FRTothus, February 17, 2012 at 3:17 am Link to this comment
Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he
an idiot?
According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting
on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi
Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise
“a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese
leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama
didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way.
Afterwards, Obama declared that Washington would
“continue to emphasize what we believe is the
importance of realizing the aspirations and rights of
all people.”
Think about that for a minute. Washington is now in
the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and
children in six countries. Washington is so concerned
with human rights that it drops bombs on schools,
hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to
uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see,
bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear
the burka and from male domination.
One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis,
four million displaced Iraqis, a country with
destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as
Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into
cinders is the proper way to show concern for human
rights.
Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.
In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones
bring human rights to the people.
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prison sites
are other places to which Washington brings human
rights. Obama, who has the power to murder American
citizens without due process of law, is too powerless
to close Guantanamo Prison.
He is powerless to prevent himself from supplying
Israel with weapons with which to murder Palestinians
and Lebanese citizens to whom Obama brings human
rights by vetoing every UN resolution passed against
Israel for its crimes against humanity.
Instead of following Washington’s human rights lead,
the evil Chinese invest in other countries, buy
things from them, and sell them goods.
Has any foreign dignitary ever raised “a sensitive
human rights issue” with Obama or his predecessor?
How is the world so deranged that Washington can
murder innocents for years on end and still profess
to be the world’s defender of human rights?
How many people has China bombed, droned, and
sanctioned into non-existence in the 21st century?
Will Syria and Iran be the next victims of
Washington’s concern for human rights?
Nothing better illustrates the total unreality of
life in the West than the fact that the entire
Western world did not break out in riotous laughter
over Obama’s expression of his human rights concern
over China’s behavior.
Washington’s concern with human rights does not
extend as far as airport security where little girls
and grandmothers are sexually groped. Antiwar
activists have their homes invaded, their personal
possessions carried off, and a grand jury is summoned
to frame them up on some terrorist charge. US soldier
Bradley Manning is held for two years in violation of
the US Constitution while the human rights government
concocts fabricated charges to punish him for
revealing a US war crime. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange
is harassed endlessly with the goal of bringing him
into the human rights clutches of Washington. Critics
of Washington’s inhumane policies are monitored and
spied upon.
Washington is the worst violator of human rights in
our era, and Washington has only begun.
Who will liberate Americans from Washington’s
clutches?
Obama, the Human Rights Hypocrite
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/15/obama-the-
Report thishuman-rights-hypocrite/