Obama, Wen scale walls on global collaboration
- Source: Global Times
- [02:26 November 19 2009]
- Comments
US President Barack Obama tours the Great Wall Wednesday at Badaling, northwest of Beijing, wrapping up his trip to China with a bit of siteseeing before heading to South Korea. Photo: AFP
More balanced relations
Ding Xinghao, president of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies, said Obama didn't seem to connect with the Chinese as well as former president Bill Clinton, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"That was an amazing event. … Clinton looked students in the eye and answered very hard questions," Ding said, recalling a 1998 nationally televised question-and-answer session with students at Peking University.
Chinese President Hu Jintao met with Obama on Tuesday. They reached a wide range of agreements on furthering strategic mutual trust, maintaining exchanges at all levels and meeting global and regional challenges together, according to a joint statement issued after the talks.
Bilateral ties should be viewed in a larger context, Tao Wenzhao, a researcher at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. "It has regional and global significance. Most of the topics in the joint statement are their responses to global challenges."
The new partnership defined in the statement indicated a more balanced relationship, Tao said, adding that Obama's trip also came as a sign that the US is changing its arrogant attitude toward other countries and treating them as equals.
"The US must learn to respect the choice of other countries in their own developmen-tal patterns," Tao said.
The joint statement emphasizes that both parties respect each other's core interests, though differences remain in a few touchy areas such as human rights.
Doubts still remain, as some important issues weren't touched on during the trip, such as the recognition of China's market economy status. However, Tao noted that it isn't reasonable to expect the trip would resolve all issues, since Obama's first trip to China was mainly aimed at setting up a general tone for the further development of bilateral relations.
In a statement issued yesterday, the White House said, "President Obama's visit to China has demonstrated the depth and breadth of the global and other challenges where US-China cooperation is critical."
Global Times/Xinhua
