News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Aug. 12, 2011: While President Obama ponders my very good advice from last week’s commentary …..
……. that he not run for re-election and do what is best for the country and for the future of the Democratic Party for the next 18 months or so he is still President so he should make the best of it.
First up, he should be slamming the obnoxious Chinese leaders who had the audacity this week to demand the U.S. better manage our economy and our debt and rein in government spending. Or else. Say what?
A bunch of anachronistic Chinese dictators who brutally repress their own people while manipulating their own economy and currency telling the United States what to do. The same vicious oligarchs who are outraged whenever the U.S. criticizes China for its many abuses. These guys must be kidding but they aren’t.
But wait, maybe there is a good reason they think they can get away with this.
Probably the most embarrassing moment of the Obama Presidency so far is the day earlier this year when Obama had the audacity to bestow the highest honor on a visiting head of state he can when he hosted a full blown State Dinner in The White Hose – no expense spared – for Chinese Dictator – ‘sorry’ President Hu Jintao – the very same Chinese “leader” who at the very moment he was visiting Obama had imprisoned a fellow Chinese Liu Xiaobo for the “crime” of having won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of freedom in China.
That’s right ..
Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama (that’s another story) bestowed the greatest honor he possibly could on President Jintao who jailed this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner along with many of his supporters. And even toasted the Chinese leader at the Big Dinner before a glittering list of American Who’s Who. How is that even conceivable? It shouldn’t be but it happened. In the Obama White House.
So maybe it was not so strange when these Chinese leaders publicly castigated the United States earlier this week for our budget deficits and spending habits. And guess what they got away with it. Not a peep from President Obama in response. Obama even sent U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner to meet with his Chinese counterpart to soothe the Chinese and beg their mercy most likely.
This is what the U.S. Presidency has been reduced.
Instead Obama should have used this unbelievable opening to slam the Chinese leaders for their repression and demand they free Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo immediately.
Then Obama should have gone on to make note of the fact that the Chinese manipulate their currency and their economy in ways no other country does to their advantage and to everyone else’s disadvantage especially the U.S. And providing China yet more surplus to “invest” in U.S. Treasuries. That we have such a large trade deficit with them because they keep the price of their goods artificially low by currency manipulation.
Obama should not stop there.
He should go on to point out how flawed the Chinese society and
economy really are below the surface. And that corruption in China is among the world’s worst reaching throughout the Chinese power structure. Likewise remind the Chinese how desperately poor hundreds of millions of Chinese remain.
There is more ….
The Chinese often shoddy workmanship and stolen technology they use to build almost everything. And how many of their so called large private companies with scandalously misrepresented financial statements are really owned and operated by Chinese gov’t elite.
And how about …..
The horrible air and water pollution in China, the world’s worst in many places. It’s horrible safety record that results in the deaths of thousands of miners and other workers each year. Its abominable repression of Tibetans. The shoddy construction that led to the deaths of thousands of young children in their schools during a major Chinese earthquake. The recent high speed rail disaster Chinese officials repressed widespread criticism regarding.
Most of all point out the Chinese economy is way overheated and is being sustained by huge wasteful spending especially on office and residential towers all over China that are feeding a gigantic real estate bubble.
President Obama should point out to the Chinese their long violent history of repressive regimes throughout history all of which ultimately collapsed from their excesses and the revolt of the oppressed Chinese masses they abused.
And President Obama do not forget to mention Tiananmen Square that drives Chinese leaders crazy and the massacre there in 1989 of Chinese students seeking nothing more than basic freedoms provided throughout the West, and in many other places in the East.
In Chinese officialdom the Tiananmen Square revolt never took place and anyone in China who mentions it is likely simply to disappear often forever. Don’t look for that history on the Chinese Internet as censored as much as any place on Earth.
So President Obama so what are you waiting for?
Or are you worried the Chinese gov’t will dump their trillions in U.S. Treasuries and collapse their economy doing so?
Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
