China: America’s New BFF

Obama’s town hall in Shanghai pleased me greatly. His silver tongue was on full display in appeasing the Chinese with conciliatory praise and refined humility. Humility, a word I would rarely associate with American politicians, is an extremely important in Asian cultures. He was not forceful, he was not arrogant, and he was the first to point out America’s hypocrisies. I think that this was something the Chinese wanted and needed to hear from an American leader.

Uighurs and Guantanamo

Four Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay who were cleared for release will not be moving to America. Although a large Uighur community in Northern Virginia has offered to accept the former detainees, elected officials from Virginia refused to allow the Uighurs to resettle in Northern Virginia.

The Premier in Bermuda, a British protectorate, agreed to accept the Uighurs without consulting the Foreign Ministry in the U.K. This unilateral move led to large protests across the island calling for his resignation that coincided with the arrival of the Uighurs. 13 other Uighurs have been moved to Palau. None of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay who have been cleared of the charges against them has been released into the United States.

I Know You Aren’t, But What Am I?

On June 3, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a message to the Chinese government, asking them to remember and recant on the 20th anniversary of the events at Tiananmen Square, saying: “A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.” Toward the end of the memorandum she dangerously advised: “This anniversary provides an opportunity for Chinese authorities to release from prison all those still serving sentences in connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989. We urge China to cease the harassment of participants in the demonstrations and begin dialogue with the family members of victims, including the Tiananmen Mothers.”

Cover to Cover

The most recent cover of The Economist was quite an interesting one: an homage to Saul Steinberg’s iconic New Yorker cover in which a distorted map of the world showed the streets of New York dominating the environment, with the rest of the United States an afterthought and China (along with Russia and Japan) mere blips on the horizon.

The Economist’s cover does not have the United States as a corresponding blip—instead it’s depicted as a ruined land, with Wall Street a sinkhole, the Statue of Liberty a beggar, and swaths of homes foreclosed. The blips for China are Africa (land of natural resources) and Europe (land of designer handbags).

What’s in a Word?

As someone living in Beijing, I am constantly bombarded with propaganda—from red-letter posters telling me that “we are building a harmonious bus station and society,” to ones that proclaim “it is everyone’s job to prevent fires,” and the other innumerable mottos about the Olympics and the importance of social harmony, I’ve seen it all. Because I live in a country in which propaganda is the norm, I’ve become acutely aware of its presence in the United States. While this piece is not meant to be all encompassing, I’d like to make a few points about framing and then discuss two words that have come into vogue in America in recent months: “surge” and “insurgent.”