In 1989, the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2009, President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Last year, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the prize but was unable to collect it because he was and remains a political prisoner in China. This week, his jailer, Hu Jintao, paid the U.S. a visit. One Nobel laureate hosted a man personally responsible for the suffering of two other Nobel laureates. As Michael Green – a former adviser to President Bush – told The New York Times, "How awkward."
During President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington and Chicago, he was lavishly hosted. Hu was welcomed with a 21-gun salute, treated to lunch at the State Department by the vice president and a full state dinner at the White House hosted by the president and first lady. As part of the visit, $45 billion in trade deals were announced, including a deal worth $19 billion for Boeing to sell 200 airplanes to China. At first glance, this seems like a windfall for the United States, but the cost is far too high.
Wednesday night, while President Obama and President Hu were dining at the White House, I ate at Hamilton Hall. Happening upon a friend of mine, I sat down at his table across from a Chinese student I had not met before. I will call him Li for his privacy. I happened to be wearing a Tibetan-style shirt I bought in India, so we soon began talking about Tibet and China. Naturally, we reached an impasse on the issue of the political status of the Dalai Lama.
Meaning to turn the discussion toward less controversial things, I asked if he was proud that President Hu was welcomed to Washington with such pomp and circumstance.
"No," Li told me. I was surprised. "Whenever high ranking officials come to Washington on a trip, they buy expensive things," he said. He told me it was wrong for the Chinese government to spend so much money on trips overseas when they don't have enough money to pay for food or health care for all Chinese citizens. The 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 Shanghai World Expo were also wastes of money, Li said.
"Would you like the government to change?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said. "But I am not a political science major and I did not go to People's University, so I cannot get a job in the government, especially not a high-ranking job." He paused. "But you cannot change your government either."
"Yes, I can." I turned to my friend. "Hey, if I ran for Congress, would you vote for me?" He shrugged and nodded. "Do you support the Chinese government?" I asked Li.
He suddenly got uncomfortable. "I cannot say," he said. "I think the government is too powerful, but everyone knows you can't say this." Li told me he is afraid speaking too openly even in the U.S. because it could make it difficult for him to return to China.
I turned my head slowly from left to right, scanning the dining hall for Chinese censors or spies. "The Chinese government is not here," I told him in Chinese. "Whatever is right, that is what you can say."
He told me he could not take the risk. He gave the example of Stanley Toops, a Miami University geography professor who was blacklisted by Chinese authorities because of a chapter he contributed to a book about the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The same thing could happen to me, Li warned, if I write such things in The Miami Student.
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I find it terrifying that the Chinese government is so powerful that it can effectively censor Chinese citizens even overseas with the implied threat of legal consequences when they return home. I find it abhorrent that we would so extravagantly host the head of such a government.
It is true that we have to deal with the Chinese Communist Party until or unless its rule is ended by the Chinese people, but I fear we may prolong that rule by affording President Hu such high diplomatic honors. What message does this send to the Dalai Lama? What message does this send to Liu Xiaobo? What message does this send to Li, our classmate?
I understand diplomacy is complicated. We cannot afford to outrage such an important trading partner during a weak economic period, but there is more than economics at stake here. Firing off a 21-gun salute for a modern dictator may be realpolitik, but it is still mediocrity.
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