Send Obama to the Countryside
The big news in China these days is the ongoing visit of President Barack Obama, who met with students in Shanghai Monday and with President Hu Jintao in Beijing yesterday. Nothing earth-shattering is expected to happen during Obama's visit and in all likelihood both sides will simply utter the same platitudes that have characterized recent Sino-American relations.
Unsurprisingly, Shanghai and Beijing were chosen as the only two stops on Obama's agenda, and in my recollection not since President Clinton's mid-90s visit to Xi'an has an American president deviated from these two cities on his China journey.
If I could influence Obama's itinerary, I'd schedule him for at least a half-day in one of China's innumerable rural villages. He wouldn't even have to go very far. A short drive from Shanghai into rural Anhui Province would suffice.
In the villages Obama would see how the majority of Chinese people actually live. He could then understand what motivates these villagers, what hopes and dreams they have, or how they perceive the future. I suspect he would come away from such a meeting with a very different perspective on modern China than he has surely taken from meetings with government officials and elite students in Shanghai.
Obama too might be better prepared than most Presidents to empathize with the locals he would meet. Unlike his predecessor, Obama spent several years living outside of the United States. Indonesia in the late 1960s and early 1970s was characterized by a similar degree of income inequality and rural poverty that today defines China.
Americans have a tendency to view China as a major, competitive power and an equal adversary. China sees itself as an ordinary developing country keen to mind its own business. The truth lies somewhere in between.
But by restricting his visit to only the nation's marquee cities I fear Obama might not have gained a very balanced portrait of what this country is really like. With a relationship as vital as the Sino-American one such a skewed perspective may ultimately prove disadvantageous and even dangerous.
November 18th, 2009 - 16:11
I suspect Jiangxi and northern Jiangsu would be closer to Shanghai than Anhui and with less of the distorting effect of Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu businessfolks sending vast sums of money back home, but anyway….
I volunteer to take Obama on a tour of a village northwest of Beijing in mid-/late-November. Just remind him to wrap up warm. And if he’s willing, I’ll take him just a short distance over the county line (and 20 years into the past) to my mother-in-law’s home village.
In other words: Well said. I agree completely.
November 18th, 2009 - 16:12
Oh, and if he’d be so kind as to buy up a few kilos of tasty, juicy apples and perhaps a flock of sheep while I’m taking Obama on this tour, so much the better.
November 18th, 2009 - 18:42
The problem is that when Clinton went to Guangxi they cleaned up the towns in advance….They even locked disabled people in their homes…
Chen Li, who runs the Yanshuo Mtn retreat and has brittle bone disease, was one of those locked in….
When Clinton found out about Chen Li later he sent an autographed photo…
But, I doubt Obama would get much of an authentic view…
November 19th, 2009 - 08:28
Well said, Matt. I hope to hear this sentiment by at least one of the talking heads on TV.
November 19th, 2009 - 08:51
Although it would be far too inconvenient, I nominate my home city of Chenzhou, Hunan. It is a real Chinese city. Mos Eisley has nothing on this veritable hive of scum and villainy. And it is the perfect place to listen to the National Sound.
November 19th, 2009 - 11:58
I thought the same thing. Then again, I always am troubled by how foreigners think they know the United States by having visited New York and Los Angeles. There is no substitute for actually being there.
November 19th, 2009 - 13:00
I sympathize with the sentiment, Matt, but the idea that US presidents, or rulers from elsewhere, can, do, or want to go around the world and learn what motivates the average etc., & then empathize, is a bit much. PEOPLE might do this, but politicians have other fish to fry.
November 19th, 2009 - 13:40
CLB,
Definitely. I think in general leaders (not just Obama) should see more of the countryside on their state visits everywhere (not just China). But as John points out perhaps I’m being too idealistic.
November 19th, 2009 - 22:36
This one is a bit rich. I know the country side of Anhui pretty well – used to be dirt poor 20 years ago but not too bad at all these days.
Either we went to different Anhui or we have different perspective with regard to “poor”.
chriswaugh_bj,
From what I see in your writing, your life in your girlfriend’s Miyun (or is it Huairou?) village is actually quite nice. So what do you want Mr. O to see – a Kiwi writing sissy poems in a “poverty-stricken” Chinese village?
November 20th, 2009 - 06:34
oiasunset: You should read more carefully: That should be “wife” and “Yanqing”. And I was agreeing with Matt and all the other commenters that a visit to the bright, shiny metropolises is nowhere near enough to understand anything about any country.
November 20th, 2009 - 10:33
Oiasunset,
No one said anything about “poor”. Would you not agree that rural Anhui is more broadly representative of China than either Shanghai or Beijing? That was the point of the post.