Wikipedia defines “kowtow” as “kneeling and bowing so low as to have one’s head touching the ground . . . the ‘full kowtow’ is three kneelings and nine knockings of the head on the ground.” Wikipedia adds that “in modern times, usage of the kowtow has become much reduced.”
Have they been watching the Obama administration?
This week, the U.S. welcomed Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping — widely assumed to the next leader of the Communist party, of the army, and, accordingly, of China. Xi will officially take power in the autumn of this year, just about the time that we hold a free election to determine our next leader.
There were the usual brass bands and honor guards to welcome the next Chinese strongman. Xi Jinping lunched with Vice President Biden and posed for pictures in the Oval Office with President Obama.
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But the Obama administration offered more than flag-snapping visuals to ingratiate itself with Xi Jinping. It sacrificed American principles.
As the Washington Post reported, Suzan Johnson Cook, the U.S. Ambassador at large for international religious freedom, had been scheduled to travel to China on February 8. Her planned visit ran into trouble when Chinese officials declined her requests for meetings. They then cited the paucity of meetings on her calendar as the reason to deny her a visa.
The Chinese have much to hide from an ambassador for religious freedom. On February 13, as Xi was heading to the U.S., a 19-year-old Tibetan monk set himself ablaze in Aba county to protest the persecution of his faith by China. His is the 24th self-immolation in the past eleven months. The Chinese regime has responded to the Tibetans’ protests with even more brutal repression than usual. Ngawang Sandrol, a Tibetan nun, suffered torture in jail for secretly recording songs about the Dalai Lama. Chinese troops patrol every block in Tibet and neighboring provinces where exiled Tibetans live.
Dissidents, including Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist human-rights advocates, have recently received long prison sentences. Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who attempts to take the Chinese constitution’s guarantees of religious liberty seriously, has been repeatedly imprisoned and tortured.
In December, a group of Uighurs were attacked while attempting to escape China across the western border. Seven were killed, several others, including five children, have been indefinitely detained. The government claims that the Uighurs were “resisting arrest.”
The Chinese have long attempted to thwart U.S. and international support for religious minorities and other freedom-seeking people inside China. But denying a visa to a U.S. ambassador is a rare display of contempt.
How did the Obama administration respond? According to the Post, Cook and her staff were advised by “superiors in the Obama administration to avoid talking publicly about her canceled trip in the days before Xi’s visit.”
So the Chinese kick sand in America’s face and the Obama administration is at pains to cover up for them?
In another signal of American meekness on human rights and religious liberty, the administration hosted a meeting on human rights the week before Xi’s visit. Absent were representatives of the Uighurs, Tibetans, or Chinese Christians. As Ellen Bork of the Foreign Policy Initiative noted, “Their reception in the White House would have sent a powerful signal of solidarity to the people of China, and especially human rights and democracy activists. We know from former political prisoners that such news has an impact, boosting their morale as well as improving their treatment.”
Is it surprising that the Chinese disdain this White House?
In the course of his meeting with Xi Jinping, Vice President Biden made only the most anodyne and glancing references to human rights and religious persecution in China. As they clinked champagne flutes, Mr. Biden offered that he had mentioned the plight of “several very prominent individuals” to the Chinese leader, and pronounced himself “appreciative” of Xi’s response.
That is feeble. The greatest asset that the U.S. possesses in international relations is moral prestige. Whether they like us or not, the nations of the world acknowledge, sometimes only implicitly, that our democracy is genuine and our commitment to human freedom unmatched. Our capacity to confer legitimacy upon others is also unique. By kowtowing to China, the Obama administration has squandered that precious asset.
I live and work in China. Before I get into it, I want to put out there that ordinary Chinese citizens are wonderful people who have much in common with Americans (strong work ethic, strong sense of family, high value placed on education, love to eat, etc.). Chinese people like Americans and America. When I hear anti-Americanism in China, 95% of the time it's coming out of some knucklehead Euortrash expat's mouth.
That being said, the ghouls running China are every bit as bad as you can imagine. You don't hear half of what goes on over here in the western press.
The US government should not be appeasing, coddling, tiptoeing around, playing down, hushing up, or any other euphemism we want to use for acting cowardly towards the CCP and their endless list of domestic and international crimes . They are vicious, amoral, barbaric thugs, and we should treat them as such. I don't know what on earth we're doing inviting Xi Jinping to a quasi-state dinner, or whatever the heck that grotesque charade was. Heck, we shouldn't be giving any Chinese leader that kind of reception. They just play those videos over and over and over and over and over on the news over here to further legitimize to the Chinese people the argument that the Communist party, and only the Communist party, can run the country.
Every time the Obama and Bush administrations (yeah, I've been over here a while) cave with regard to standing up for basic universal human freedoms and dignity for fear of hurting the feelings of the monsters in charge over here, it just makes me sick. Messers Derbyshire and Nordlinger often write about how the US used to give hope to dissidents in oppressive countries by standing up for freedom and human rights and speaking strongly against oppressive regimes of all stripes. We're leaving those people in the dark in China.
The USA used to be a beacon of freedom to the entire world. Now, American companies like Yahoo are giving up dissidents' information to authoritarian thugs who use that info to throw them in prison and torture them. Oracle helped build the Great Firewall. Can you imagine what we'd think of the Greatest Generation if they went and sold barbed wire to East Germany to put on top of the Berlin Wall?
What in the world are we thinking? When all is said and done, we're going to be very ashamed of this chapter in our history.
thanks for reminding us about the Chinese people. I think this is true in other countries as well, particularly Iran, where the people themselves are not the problem. unfortunately, Obama's been pretty clear that he's on the side of the governments in both these cases.
and I fear that we won't have to wait too long for history to confirm that this is indeed not one of America's shining moments...
When you have a government that does not respect religious freedoms at home, how can you expect it to offer support to religious dissenters in other countries?
Nothing surprising here. Every administration from Nixon has kowtow to the Chinese. Our country is run by politicians bought and paid for by the multinationals that operate the global human slave trade.
I am reminded of a photograph I saw of Sen. Harry Reid pulling out a chair for vice president Xi Jinping.
As Senate majority leader, Reid has had a starring role in passing President Obama's short-sighted economic policies which have left this country in debt to the Chinese. The photograph - which I saw in the Wall Street Journal - reminded me of a servant pulling out the chair for his master.
You have more religious freedom in this country than you could ever need. Stop crying and feeling sorry for yourselves. I am voting for Obama and so will the majority of this country.
"... our democracy is genuine and our commitment to human freedom unmatched."
Wrong on both counts Mona. Our CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC was NEVER a democracy for our Founders weren't that stupid to create another mobocracy like the contemporaneous French Revolution. As the Occupy Wall Stree crowd & supporters proved, our committment is to anarchy, not freedom, the latter implying responsibility among thoughtful adults that are now persona non grata. As the Founders promised concerning those who turn their backs on God as most do today, only God can save us, without whom we're fatally doomed. God save us all.
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