Hu Jintao meets the free press from WASH POST 19JAN11

HEY hu jintao THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!
Something about human rights just doesn't translate for Chinese President Hu Jintao.
President Obama granted him the full state-dinner treatment that President George W. Bush denied him five years ago - but in return, Hu had to put up with a news conference, which he had refused to do when Obama visited China. For a repressive ruler, facing a free press is about as pleasant a prospect as attending the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
After the leaders' standard opening statements full of the blah-blah about bilateral cooperation, the Associated Press's Ben Feller rose and asked a gutsy, forceful question.
"Can you explain to the American people how the United States can be so allied with a country that is known for treating its people so poorly, for using censorship and force to repress its people?" he asked Obama. And to Hu: "I'd like to give you a chance to respond to this issue of human rights. How do you justify China's record, and do you think that's any of the business of the American people?"
Obama answered. The translator translated. All eyes turned to Hu - who said nothing.
Instead, he looked to a woman from China Central Television - the state-run network that answers to the Communist Party's propaganda department - who tossed him a softball about "friendship and mutual understanding."
But the next questioner, Bloomberg's Hans Nichols, gave Hu a lesson in press freedoms. "First off, my colleague asked you a question about human rights which you did not answer," the lanky newsman advised the Chinese strongman. "I was wondering if we could get an answer to that question."
In Beijing, that impertinence would get a reporter jailed. But Hu wasn't in Beijing. During the translation of Nichols's question, Hu held a palm up and smiled, as if he couldn't see what all the fuss was about. "Because of the technical translation and interpretation problem, I did not hear the question about the human rights," he explained - falsely, as it turns out.
It was a good moment for the American press. Feller and Nichols put the Chinese leader on the spot in a way that Obama, constrained by protocol, could not have done. The White House press corps has at times been too gentle on Obama (recall the adulatory pre-Christmas news conference), but on Wednesday afternoon, Obama and the press corps were justifiably on the same side, displaying the rights of free people.
For reporters, it was a second time in a week they were unexpectedly allied with the White House against foreigners suspicious of American freedoms. In the White House briefing room last week, a reporter from Russia's state-run Itar-Tass news agency hectored press secretary Robert Gibbs about the Tucson shooting, asking if too much freedom was to blame. Reporters, though they spend their days quarreling with Gibbs, very much supported his sharp refutation of the Russian's challenge.
The Hu case was stranger still. Though such events are usually done with simultaneous translation (the leaders and reporters are given headsets), the Chinese delegation had requested that the Q&A portion of the news conference be translated consecutively, which takes twice as long.
Exactly why the Chinese made this request was not apparent - but a clue emerged when Hu started getting grilled about human rights. After Feller asked his question about human rights and Obama answered, Hu looked around, pointing at his ear; an aide came up and whispered something to him. According to a person in the know, Feller's question - including the bit about human rights directed at Hu - was fully translated into Chinese.
Hu, however, ignored that question in favor of the gentler one from his employee at Chinese television. As luck would have it, Hu was perfectly prepared for the question, and, in his reply, looked down to read statistics from his notes.
Reporters glanced at each other, puzzled over Hu's ignoring of Feller's question. During the interminable translation into Mandarin of Hu's answer to the Chinese reporter's question, Obama flashed a grin at Gibbs.
Hu, his forehead shining, had another plant waiting in the crowd, a reporter from the state-run Xinhua news agency. But before Hu could get that lifeline tossed his way, the microphone went to the American side, where Nichols demanded an answer to the human-rights question. This time, Hu couldn't claim it was lost in translation.
"China is a developing country with a huge population and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform," he explained. "In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development, and a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights."
No wonder Hu doesn't like questions: He might have to give an honest answer.
danamilbank@washpost.com

Ahead of visit by China's Hu, Obama meets with advocates for human rights from WASHINGTON POST 13JAN11

PRES OBAMA needs to follow through and bring up human rights in china when meeting with pres hu next week. While the U.S. record on human rights is not lilly white (considering our recent record on torture, Gitmo, Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, and Leonard Peltier to name a few) the increased repression of the Chinese, Tibetan and Uygur people, the repression of religious, political, social, environmental, labor and economic rights, the complete and total disregard for human rights by the regime in Beijing needs to be discussed honestly and openly. The prc needs to be told the lack of human rights by the government is unacceptable. Pres Obama also needs to tell the government of pres hu the U.S. supports human rights activist in the Chinese religious communities, that the U.S. supports Liu Xiaobo, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and all the signers of Charter 08, that the U.S. supports the growing organized labor movement in China. If the regime in Beijing is offended so be it, the free world has been grossly offended by the government of the prc for years.....



President Obama met for more than an hour Thursday at the White House with five advocates for greater civil liberties and human rights in China, just days before Chinese President Hu Jintao's arrival in Washington for a state visit.
The meeting - which lasted 75 minutes in the Roosevelt Room - was part of Obama's preparation for his meetings with the Chinese leader, two senior administration officials said.
It was the first time Obama has met with advocates for human rights in China at the White House.
In a September address at the U.N. General Assembly, the president emphasized the centrality of human rights in U.S. foreign policy. But the administration has been cautious in raising the issue publicly with China, which has traditionally reacted harshly to criticism of its rights record.
On Thursday, Obama questioned the advocates - three of whom were born in China - about how, in the words of one administration official, "the arbitrary exercise of power is felt in the everyday lives of the Chinese people." Obama recalled his own childhood in Indonesia, then governed by dictatorship.
"One thing he kept coming back to was, how does the omnipresence of the state, how does corruption, affect the lives of real people," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "And he asked how we should use our leverage. Where should we use our leverage?"
"There was a lot of talk about how to reach into China to be heard," the official continued. "He was very, very interested in that."
While economic and security issues are likely to be the focus of much of Hu's visit, how Obama manages the topic of human rights will likely help define the summit and provide clues to how the president intends to speak about the contentious subject with China in the years ahead.
By hosting Hu, who arrives Wednesday, Obama will achieve the distinction of becoming the first U.S. president to host a head of state who is currently holding a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison.
The Chinese writer and democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo was awarded the prize in October, and it was presented to his empty chair in Oslo two months later. Obama, who won the prize the previous year, "welcomed" the Nobel Committee's decision to award the prize to Liu. China condemned it.
At their summit, Obama and Hu are expected to announce the resumption of the U.S.-China "human rights dialogue" after a roughly half-year hiatus. The forum allows U.S. officials to raise with the Chinese government concerns over specific political prisoners, among other issues.
But the subject also holds the most potential to disrupt a visit that Hu views as important to his legacy. He is scheduled to leave the presidency in 2012.
A second senior administration official who attended Thursday's meeting with the human rights advocates said Obama will speak about human rights in his public appearance with Hu and also bring up the issue during their private meetings.
The two will also take questions at a news conference, something U.S. officials insisted on.
"The president's style in talking about human rights is different than others have used," the official said. "His convictions come through strongly, but he is not interested in hectoring, or lecturing, or embarrassing them. He's interested in affecting how people think."
Administration officials said Obama also sought the human rights advocates' assessment of the rising nationalism expressed by young people in China, and what effect it might have on outside efforts to expand civil liberties inside the country.
The human rights advocates who attended the meeting with Obama were Andrew Nathan of Columbia University; Zha Jianying, a Chinese writer and expert on the country's youth culture; Paul Gewirtz, founder of the China Law Center at Yale University; Bette Bao Lord, a Chinese-born writer, democracy advocate and wife of former U.S. ambassador to China Winston Lord; and Li Xiarong, a Chinese human rights advocate since the 1980s now living in exile in the United States.
All have worked extensively inside China. Zha is also a signer of Charter 08, a petition for greater civil liberties and a constitutional democracy that Liu, the imprisoned Nobel laureate, helped write and circulate.
"The meeting was very pluralistic, many different opinions were shared," said the first official. "But the consensus was that human rights has to be on the agenda even if it is awkward. And it makes a difference when it is."