President Bush tackling Chinese rights -- from Thailand

On his final scheduled trip to Asia as president, George W. Bush is delivering what may be his toughest message to China on human rights — but from afar.

In remarks prepared for delivery Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand, where Bush and his wife and daughter Barbara arrived today, Bush says that the United States and China have made progress across a wide swath of the relationship, particularly in trade.

This “constructive relationship,” he says on his final stop before visiting Beijing to attend the opening days of the Summer Olympic Games beginning Friday, “has placed America in a better position to be honest and direct on other issues.” He singles out religious freedom and human rights.

And, in a key passage, he says:

The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings.  So America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates, and religious activists.  We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labor rights not to antagonize China’s leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential.  And we press for openness and justice not to impose our beliefs, but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs.

The remarks go to the heart of issues human rights campaigners from China and elsewhere have raised with Bush — most recently at a private meeting with him at the White House last week ahead of the trip.

The question that remains, however, is this: Will the symbolism of his taking part in the Olympic festivities, including attending the opening ceremony in which Chinese President Hu Jintao and other Chinese officials have put so much stock, outweigh his words?

After all, government-controlled news media will be able to block wide Chinese access to Bush’s critical message, while touting his words of praise and displaying images of him at the Olympic stadium in Beijing.

For Bush, there was little question about attending the games once he gave his word to Hu last September that he would show up. He has made clear that backing out of the trip or delivering a blunt public message of rebuke on human rights would be deeply insulting to the Chinese and, in his view, would set back the U.S.-Chinese relationship he has sought to construct.

So, the issue that hung over the visit was how to balance the public image without appearing to undercut the political message he wanted to convey.

The speech in Bangkok provides the answer.

In the end, Bush says, “Only China can decide what course it will follow.”

“America and our partners are realistic, and we are prepared for any possibility,” he says.

But, closing on an upbeat note, he adds:

I am optimistic about China’s future. Young people who grow up with the freedom to trade goods will ultimately demand the freedom to trade ideas, especially on an unrestricted Internet. Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and traditions.  Yet change will arrive.  And it will be clear for all to see that those who aspire to speak their conscience and worship their God are no threat to the future of China.  They are the people who will make China a great nation in the 21st century.

The White House press office took the unusual step of distributing the prepared text well ahead of delivery -- a move that Press Secretary Dana Perino told reporters was made to make it more convenient for them. With the time difference between Asia and the United States, the speech will be delivered on deadline for U.S. newspapers.

But the distribution of the text also assures wider dissemination. And that's what the White House wanted.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Gerald Herbert / Associated Press

 

Olympics pose human rights challenge for Bush

President Bush is spending much of the next day en route to South Korea, his first stop on a trip that will take him to China by week's end.

Much as the trip has been built around the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Summer Olympic Games. But politics in general -- and human rights in particular -- threaten to overtake sports as the focus. And that opens up this question: Is this what Bush had in mind a year ago when he yielded to Chinese entreaties and promised Chinese President Hu Jintao that he would attend?

As the trip approached last week, the White House did little to calm the strong current of human rights issues running through the preparations.

The president met behind the scenes at the White House with five Chinese dissidents last week, earning a strong rebuke from the Chinese government. And, the Washington Post noted today, Bush's national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley met privately a day later with the heads of several major human rights organizations.

"My main message was that, much as the president would like the Olympics to be an apolitical sporting event, it won't be," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the Post in an e-mail message.

He continued:

Chinese people will seize the opportunity through peaceful protest to advance their own freedom agenda, the Chiense government will crack down, and President Bush will look awful if he ignores the repression around him and simply applauds the athletes.

Along comes Sen. John McCain, who also has some advice for the president he is seeking to replace: Don't be too "confrontational" with the Chinese hosts.

In an interview with the Washington Post, McCain said:

You don't want to go over there and insult the Chinese. It would not be good for our relations. I certainly don't think the president would or should go over there and be confrontational. At the same time I think the president can in a very diplomatic style make it clear what we stand for and believe in.

He's getting advice, too, from activists, some of whom are urging him to go beyond out-of-sight comments he might make to Chinese leaders and take a more visible step: Worship with underground Christians while in Beijing to remind Chinese officials that Americans value freedom of religion.

But the president has resisted efforts to make overt moves, vowing to separate politics from the Games. "I made a decision not to politicize the games," Bush said in an interview with Asian journalists last week. "This is for athletics."

Is it? Let's hear your thoughts.

-- James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman

Photo credit: Xinhua News Agency

Bush calls China's Hu 'a straightforward guy'

On the eve of the Beijing Olympics, President Bush is walking a delicate line between making clear U.S. concerns about humanitarian causes while not insulting his Chinese hosts. Sort of a new Olympic sport: tightrope-walking.

In a series of interviews with Asian newspapers this week, Bush called Chinese President Hu Jintao "a straightforward guy" and added, "I'm very comfortable in his presence and we will talk about the kind of issues we always talk about."

Bush said he found Hu "very open." Bush said he planned to attend the games, not politicize them. As he told Fuqing Yang of Central China TV:

It's important for me to send a clear signal to the Chinese people that we respect them. I tell people that of course we've got differences with China on issues. They've got differences with us on issues. But the best way to conduct our diplomacy and conduct our relations is out of mutual respect. And it's much more likely a Chinese leader will listen to my concerns if he knows I respect the people of China.

But Bush also met this week with Chinese dissidents, bringing a rebuke from Beijing that the White House had sent a "seriously wrong message" in giving a platform to those working against the communist regime.

As C2C reported here yesterday, the Bush trip to the Olympics is sort of a family affair. Joining the president in Beijing will be his father, George H.W. Bush, the first U.S. ambassador to China 30 years ago, and 10 other Bush friends and relatives.

Bush, an avid cyclist, told journalists he plans to do some mountain biking while he's in China,  "hopefully" including a spin on the Olympic track.

I'm going to mountain-bike again on the Olympic -- hopefully -- on the Olympic course, just to get some exercise.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Kimimasa Mayama / AP

Upcoming beyond the White House ...

President Bush is gone from the White House. But he'll be back.

He has embarked on a 12-day journey that is taking him from Washington to West Virginia to Kennebunkport, Maine, and then, after an overnight respite at Camp David, on to Asia -- where he's got his hands full with sticky diplomatic situations.

In Seoul, the focus is northward -- on the continuing efforts to tame North Korea's nuclear ambitions. In Bangkok, the pressing issue is Myanmar. And while the purpose of the president's visit to smoggy Beijing is ostensibly to attend the opening of the Summer Olympic Games and cheer for U.S. athletes, questions about China's handling of human rights issues will undergird everything he does there.

For the schedule, read the full story ...

Photo credit: Peter Parks / Agence France-Presse

The Dalai Lama loves Bush

The Dalai Lama, the beloved leader of the beleaguered Tibetans, is a man who often speaks in sweeping terms. As would be expected of a spiritual man.

So it is not surprising that while on a weeks-long teaching tour of the United States, the 73-year-old Buddhist leader recently waxed exuberant about how much it meant to him to have President Bush's support from the moment the two first met in the White House on May 23, 2001. He told CNN's Carol Costello:

I love him. Because since my first visit, I noted he as a human being [was] very nice, very open, very straightforward. My first call at that time, within a few seconds, we became very close friends. So I love him.

The Dalai Lama suggested that Bush "lacked understanding of reality" in launching a war in Iraq where it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction. And he said Americans in general need to learn "the reality of limitation," because raw consumerism can led to "too much stress, too much competition and too much desire."

But the Tibetan leader, born in China but exiled to India after the failed Tibetan uprising in 1959, also said he is happy that China is the host of this summer's Olympic Games and has no quarrel with world leaders who plan to attend. In fact, the Dalai Lama himself has asked to attend, but has so far been turned down by the Beijing government.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Eric Draper / White House

Bush welcomes athletes as critics fault Olympics

   

It was a telegenic moment this morning in the Rose Garden as President Bush welcomed the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams to the White House. Surrounded by young, strong athletes full of promise, Bush quipped that he was delighted to see a 58-year-old sailor among the group, "which gives this 62-year-old mountain biker hope that you may need me in Beijing." All Americans, the president said, "are looking forward to rooting for you."

But behind the quips, the festivities and the youthful (and not so youthful) exuberance, some are questioning whether the Olympics do more harm than good in international relations. In the latest issue of Foreign Policy Magazine, a University of Texas professor describes how the games often mask human rights abuses, rarely spur political change and lend legitimacy to dictators.

In a piece called Think Again: The Olympics, John Hoberman, author of "The Olympic Crisis: Sport, Politics and the Moral Order," argues that the Beijing games could be the most controversial ever, eclipsing the 1936 Berlin Games (Hitler in the reviewing stands), the 1972 Munich Games (11 Israeli athletes killed by terrorists) and the 1980 Moscow Games (boycotted by the U.S. after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). He writes:

The Nazi regime of 1936 had nothing comparable to China’s global reach today, and the Soviet economy in 1980 was a dead man walking. The most heated controversies surrounding Beijing probably have yet to unfold.

Bush, whose plans to attend the opening ceremonies in Beijing stirred controversy, today focused on the athletes' "skill and discipline," singling out ...

Bush will attend Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, White House announces

In a classic case of announcing controversial news when it is least likely to draw attention, the White House finally disclosed this afternoon, on the eve of a three-day holiday, that President Bush will -- as expected -- attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games next month.

Several hours earlier, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino signaled that it was more than likely that the president would be in the stadium on the opening day, calling his attendance "a distinct possibility," when asked about it by reporters.

But it was an announcement that the White House had been putting off for months -- indeed, ever since Bush committed himself to attending at least some of the Games when he met with Chinese President Hu Jintao last September in Australia.

The issue is complicated, but there was little expectation that the president would not in the end show up for the ceremonies. To do otherwise -- as a protest of Beijing's human rights policies and its treatment of Tibetans and the Dalai Lama -- would have been a slap in the face for the Chinese.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Paula Bronstein / Getty Images