 New York City's 'China Policy'
UNITED NATIONS — In what may have been one of the less scripted parts of Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao's visit to America, the PRC's heir apparent came to New York and met with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While the City's former feisty Mayor Rudy Giuliani refused to see visiting mandarins from the Marxist Middle Kingdom, (or Arafat for that matter) the city's new Mayor decided to meet with Hu. A meeting with the Mayor and trips to the New York Stock Exchange and Ground Zero are all scripted stops for a visiting dignitary--especially one who is slated to lead the world's largest country.
Bloomberg's rendezvous with China's dauphin designate was quickly brushed off except by the city's scrappy new newspaper The New York Sun who headlined "Bloomberg meets with Leader of Red China." Later the Mayor said he viewed both China and Taiwan as two separate countries. Though stating the obvious, hizhonor probably caused quite a buzz back in Beijing, never mind in the corridors of the State Department where the enduring fiction of "One China" has become part of the political iconography. The more dour practioners of the art of divining messages from the visitor from the Middle Kingdom no doubt saw a bump in their cardiac EKG levels, as to Bloomberg's soundings on the divided Chinese nation. But that's New York politics or was it a trial baloon?
The Sun reminded readers editorially,,,"In the case of Communist China, Mr. Giuliani maintained a memorably principled policy. He refused twice to meet with top officials of the world largest totalitarian dictatorship...when Mr. Bloomberg met with Vice Presdient Hu, the new mayor has at least made it clear that he was prepared to meet as well with the Free Chinese leadership and suggested he thinks of Taiwan as a country." Still the Sun warned, "But Bloomberg's departure from Guiliani's precedent is no small thing, suggesting that he hasn't thought through his custodianship of the foreign policy of New York."
Naturally while New York City does not have a formal "foreign policy" the Mayor's pronouncements are noted, deciphered, and often become a sounding board for the city's various ethnic communities. Rudy Giuliani was notable in giving snubs to characters the like of China's communists, Chairman Arafat, or Comrade Castro. Rudy did not mince words any more than did former Mayor Ed Koch. Bloomberg, ever the businessman turned Mayor, naturally plays a different hand of cards and has a different weltanshanung.
Later at the United Nations, Hu met with Secretary General Kofi Annan and exchanged the usual political pleasantries and tour d'horizon. Happily, the very same day, the United States regained its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission, a place from which it was humiliatingly voted off last year by a combination of sleazy machinations and a faux pas by the State Department to see it coming. This year, both deft U.S. diplomacy and consideration by friends Italy and Spain, who pulled out of the running, gave America its seat back on the Commission. The seat on the 54 member body, co-founded by the U.S. in 1947, remains significant as the group has in the past and with Washington's influence tried to censure communist China for human rights violations.
So where is China going? Interestingly just weeks ago, current People's Republic of China President Jiang Zemin visited both the Islamic Republic of Iran and Libya; here we have a clear juxtaposition of Beijing's outreach to both radical states and to the West. Naturally most of China's political actions now are focused on this October's Communist Party Congress.
At the upcoming 16th Communist Party Congress, dauphin Hu Jintao will most likely be elevated to the role of Party Chairman and later President of the People's Republic of China, replacing Jiang Zemin. The U.S. visit by the 58 year old Hu, positively young by Beijing standards, allows Americans the chance to interface with the presumably "reformist leader." Despite Hu's less than pleasant tenure as CCP enforcer in Tibet during the 1989 Tiananmen incident throughout the Mainland, the visitor has been variously described as a "fourth generation" and the implication is that he may be more "open minded."
Recently speaking in his capacity as President of the Communist Party School of the Central Committee, Hu stated, " Entering the new century we must continue along our modernization course, achieve the reunification of the motherland (Taiwan), safeguard world peace, and promote common development." He added at a speech opening the Spring Semester in Beijing, "The strengethening of the party's ideology must adhere to the three representatives "Marxism-Leninism and the theories set forth by Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping as the foundation for governing the country, tool for observing the world, and a source of theoretical power."
He stressed the "three representatives" as guidelines for thought and action. Clearly, Hu's formal benediction to China's mass murderer Mao Tse-tung and dictator Deng, who despite his economic accomplishments was the ultimate hit man of Tiananmen Square, are harldy soothing messages. It appears that in the future Chairman Hu will saldy give the UN Human Rights Commission something to censure.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
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