Dyslexic Media: All this huff and puff over Hu?

American Media arranges a political hit job on Chinese President, Hu Jintao prior to his arrival to Washington. 

Mr. President, this is what they are ready to offer for Arizona.

Today, The New York Times and Washington Post ran stories about how Hu Jintao is politically weak and is hardly able to control his own government. A scary thought. Only, it reeks too much of a conspiracy theory coming out of a country that was just shown king-sized finger by Hu Jintao’s regime...

Hell hath no fury as the United States Scorned. Last week when the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, went to Beijing to talk to Chinese Government about how not to start an arms race, he was welcomed by Chinese Military testing a new stealth fighter (J-20) hours before Gates sat down with President Hu Jintao. Oh snap! Not only did the move take the US Government totally by surprise, Washington is still at loss over how to respond officially.

Of course, that doesn’t mean US can’t take its revenge gossiping-housewives style. Immediately, after the test, Wall Street Journal ran a story quoting a “Senior US Official” about how Hu Jintao, country’s supreme leader had no clue about the test. Bill Bishop, a China watcher, wrote an interesting blog post about how unlikely that scenario is. 

And today, two of the biggest newspapers in United States ran story desperately trying to prove how politically weak the Chinese premier actually is. While NYT was a little more pushy about the story than the Post, both seemed to be homing in on the same point – Hu is good, some of his people not so good and he can’t control them.

Hey, for all I know, they might be right. Only both stories quote mysterious US officials or no one at all, when stating the important facts. Moreover, the argument seems a little flimsy. NYT uses Jintao’s failure to revalue China’s currency, rein in North Korea, ease up on dissidents or stop copying American technology as the smoking gun for its argument. Clearly, if Jintao doesn’t concede to American wish list (and that’s what this is) it must be because he can’t control his government which secretly being run by hawkish pro-military faction. It is completely implausible that Jintao continues to let Chinese companies copy American technologies, keeps political dissidents under his boot and let North Korea run amok because it is in his and Chinese self-interest.

Also, this story sits just too well with Obama Administration’s narrative for its own electorate. One of Obama’s campaign promises was to sit down and start a real conversation with China. Now relations between the two countries are at one of their lowest points in the recent history. So a good explanation can be that Washington was all ready to talk, only they couldn’t figure out who to talk to behind the iron curtain. The Post actually helpfully says it out loud, “[the leadership confusion] also helps explain why Washington often has so much trouble figuring out who is making decisions in Beijing and why.” Of course, it is completely plausible that these stories are right on the money, but if that is the case, it will be a sheer coincidence. 

I hope Washington doesn’t actually start believing its own rhetoric because otherwise the world is in deep trouble.