Avoiding embarrassment at the Obama town hall

• Source: Global Times
• [21:25 December 02 2009]
• Comments

Ni Shixiong

Editor's Note:

As one of the scholars who first introduced Western international theories into China, Ni Shixiong (Ni), a professor at Fudan University, is an accomplished specialist on Sino-US relations. Before US President Barack Obama's visit to China, Ni was invited by local Shanghai authorities to discuss how to organize Obama's town hall meeting with Shanghai youth, and lectured for and trained participant students. The following is an interview by Guangzhou-based Southern People Weekly magazine (SPW) with Ni on the story behind the meeting.

SPW: Obama's first public appearance in China was in his town hall meeting with Shanghai youth. How were the over 400 participant students organized?

Ni: Shanghai was the opening scene of Obama's visit to China, while the climax was in Beijing.

Therefore, what we needed to do was prepare for an open discussion, and we could not overshadow what really counted. The young people had to be representative, and had to ask questions that were both universal and important.

To be specific, we drew them from eight universities. At first, we did not consider involving so many universities, but at last increased it to eight at the request of the US.

As far as I know, we did everything proposed by the US during the preparation. The common goal of both sides was to do it well.

Over the past three decades since reform and opening-up began, China has become more and more flexible and open, while in the past it was comparatively rigid.

Since the town hall meeting was a prologue, there must be a director, me. But the director's responsibility was not to control things.