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July 29, 2008
Obamamania Revisited
I just had a very interesting exchange over the blogsphere with my good friend, Maha, a fellow Brown graduate, who is an argent Hillary supporter and is still not sold on Obama. See her posts and my comments here.
Staying with the topic, I hope all readers of this blog who still have doubts about Obama's substance to read his first memoir, "Dreams from My Father," which I am about to finish very soon. It is an authentic and unfiltered look at Obama, whic h you rarely get these days with the media surrounding him 24/7, each with a hidden agenda of its own. It is an easy read that is very well-writtened, and will give you a good look at the struggles that he has had and his incredible ability to bring people together, make good judgment and tough decisions in the face of challenges.
I look forward to more exchanges on this topic and will hopefully bring everyone some juicy inside take as I begin my work for the campaign.
Posted by Kevin Xu at 11:33 PM | Comments (1)
July 28, 2008
Beware of Terrorism
First of all, apologies for the hiatus in my posting. Campaign work has been very busy, and I've recently decided to move to North Carolina to work on the Obama for America campaign, helping to convert a state that's been red in the last 22 years. You can expect my future posts to have lots of campaign related news and insights. I will of course keep to the spirit of the Watson Institute by only writing on topics that are pertinent to international affairs.
To jumpstart the blog, I want to focus on a piece of news that is very much under-publicized and under-emphasized and that is the potential for Islamic terrorism in the upcoming Beijing Olympics. It is ironic how little attention this topic has received considering every other imaginable story related to the Olympics has been dominating all headlines in the last month (air pollution, uniforms for the official welcoming committee, algae near the coast that may hamper the sailing competition) and will continue to do so. However, a recent video was released by an overtly terrorist group known as the Turkestan Islamic Party, which is closely affiliated with the whole independence movement of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In the video, the leader, Commander Seyfullah, claimed responsibility for the recent bombing attacks in Shanghai and Yunnan, celebrating the success of its jihads and boasting more violent activities during the Olympics. What is more disturbing is that this news has received very little coverage and reporting in mainstream western media. I first became aware of this on the Singaporean newspaper, ZaoBao, where its headline featured a screenshot of the video and hauntingly resembles previous videos released by bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. But the story only received secondary attention from BBC, which has had a tradition of extensive and often critical coverage of China. The BBC article cursorily mentioned the content of the video and stated that the Chinese government has rebuked the videos claim that the bombings were acts of terrorism. The International Herald Tribune produced an equally hasty coverage of the news, which I had to search through its Asia-Pacific section to locate. While a similar video that targets western countries would immediately make headline in all major media outlets, this video targeting China has received minimal attention at best. It is predictable that the Chinese media would downplay the impact of such a video in order to ensure a stable and secure procession of the Olympics. But it is intriguing, if not insulting, that that western media would devote so little attention to something that they will normally jump head over heels on if the targeted country is different.
Many people hate China for different reasons and I can sympathize with the majority of those reasons. Many human rights activists, Tibet/Uyghur sympathizers, and maybe even unemployed workers in the Mid-West probably hope that the Beijing Olympics turn into a disaster. But whatever grievance you have against China, it is no excuse for perversely hoping for the suffering of innocent people at the hands of terrorism simply because you don't like their government. My reaction to this lack of attention on terrorism in Beijing maybe an overreaction and I certainly hope so. But so far, I have not seen due attention paid to terrorists threats against China, which are legitimate and palpable. China has a brutal government, especially regarding its policies on minority issues, but, like I said, no innocent Chinese people deserve suffering because of their government's imperial policy, just like how no one out of the 3,000 plus who died on 9/11 deserve their fate because of THEIR government's imperial policy in the Middle East.
If the War on Terror is truly global, then we need not only a global attack strategy but a global commitment to protecting citizens around the world. The next bulls-eye is clearly China, and we must watch the terrorists there closely.
Posted by Kevin Xu at 10:14 PM | Comments (1)
July 06, 2008
Early Gold Medal for Team China
The Beijing Olympics may be still a month away, but Team China has already struck gold. After the pre-meetings of the G8 Summitt in scenic Hokkaido, President Bush and PM Fukuda have both stated their commitment to attend the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. To my knowledge, no U.S. president has ever attended the Opening Ceremony of any Olympics. This is a major diplomatic victory for the Chinese especially considering the miserable PR embarassment that it has suffered during the world tour of the Olympic torch and the subsequent drove of world leaders who decided to not attend the Opening Ceremony in protest of China's poor human rights record, most prominently including Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel.
Bush and Fukuda passionately justify their decision by separating sports from politics. But we all understand that Olympics have always been political, sometimes resulting in very unfortunate and unfair consequences for the athletes. So why did Bush decide to go? In my understanding, Bush's decision to please China is intimately related to his success in the North Korea non-proliferation issue--arguably his only positive legacy on both the foreign and domestic front. The Bush team deserves credit for North Korea's recent move to turn over detailed documents of its nuclear program and subsequently destroying one of its reactors, and it is likely that China has been playing a continuous role in facilitating this development behind closed doors. Bush has taken North Korea off the terror list, which made many East Asian neighbors, including Japan, very unhappy. But what is done is done and the last thing Bush wants to see is North Korea turning back on its promises, which will make him look like a fool and squander his only chance of leaving a positive legacy in foreign affairs, at least in the foreseeable future. (It is still, in my opinion, unclear whether Iraq will be a positive or negative chapter in Bush's presidency; the war isn't over yet.) Therefore, to keep his success in North Korea on course, he must make sure China stays with him, and attending the Opening Ceremony and offending some human rights activists is a small price to pay.
Fukuda also has good reasons to please China. Since he took over the Japanese Diet, he's been much more pro-China than his two predecessors, Abe and Koizumi. He has made major efforts to improve relation between the two countries, from his visit to China that has "brought spring" to the bilateral relations, to the most recent settlement of the border and resource dispute in the East China Sea. Although the details on the border agreement and agreement to jointly excavate natural resources are still unclear, it is clear that both China and Japan are mindful of improving their relations at every step of the way. Seeing how increasingly dependent the lacklustre Japanese economy is on China and the vast prospect of wealth and strength the two Asia giants can bring to each other if their relationship continues to improve, attending the Ceremony is again a small price to pay for Fukuda, especially considering that the human rights organizations' presence is weak in Japan.
China has already scored major diplomatic victories for its Olympics, earning approval from the two top economic nations. Europe is still giving China the cold shoulder, but from China's recent reaction to Sarkozy's refusal to go to the Ceremony if China doesn't engage in genuine negotiation with the Tibetans and improve its human rights record, it's clear that China could care less about what Europe thinks at this point. The Chinese state media sent a less-than subtle message to Sarkozy, essentially saying that his presence is not welcomed and the Chinese people don't even want him here. This will certainly not go well with the EU since Sarkozy is not its president, but China has found a new sense of confidence, if not arrogance, when it comes to running its Olympics. This is a dramatic reversal from 3 months ago when China was under siege from the world for its violent crackdown in Tibet. There's still lots of time left between now and the Olympics, but so far China is leading the gold medal standing.
Posted by Kevin Xu at 11:02 PM