Barack
Obama 'deliberately snubbed' by Chinese in chaotic arrival at G20
President
was denied a red carpet welcome and made to ‘go out of the ass’
of Air Force One, observers say
Tom Phillips in
Beijing
Sunday 4 September
2016 03.14 BST
China’s leaders
have been accused of delivering a calculated diplomatic snub to
Barack Obama after the US president was denied a red-carpet welcome
during his chaotic arrival in Hangzhou ahead of the start of the G20.
Chinese authorities
have rolled out the red carpet for leaders including India’s prime
pinister Narendra Modi, Russian president Vladimir Putin, South
Korean president Park Geun-hye, Brazil’s president Michel Temer and
British prime minister Theresa May, who touched down on Sunday
morning.
But the leader of
the world’s largest economy, who is on his final tour of Asia, was
forced to disembark from Air Force One through a little-used exit in
the plane’s belly after no rolling staircase was provided when he
landed in the eastern Chinese city on Saturday afternoon.
When Obama did find
his way onto the tarmac, there were heated altercations between US
and Chinese officials, with one Chinese official caught on video
shouting: “This is our country! This is our airport!”
“The reception
that President Obama and his staff got when they arrived here
Saturday afternoon was bruising, even by Chinese standards,” the
New York Times reported.
Jorge Guajardo,
Mexico’s former ambassador to China, said he was convinced Obama’s
treatment was part of a calculated snub.
“These things do
not happen by mistake. Not with the Chinese,” Guajardo, who hosted
presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón during his time
in Beijing, told the Guardian.
“I’ve dealt with
the Chinese for six years. I’ve done these visits. I took Xi
Jinping to Mexico. I received two Mexican presidents in China. I know
exactly how these things get worked out. It’s down to the last
detail in everything. It’s not a mistake. It’s not.”
Guajardo added:
“It’s a snub. It’s a way of saying: ‘You know, you’re not
that special to us.’ It’s part of the new Chinese arrogance. It’s
part of stirring up Chinese nationalism. It’s part of saying:
‘China stands up to the superpower.’ It’s part of saying: ‘And
by the way, you’re just someone else to us.’ It works very well
with the local audience.
“Why [did it
happen]?” the former diplomat, who was ambassador from 2007 until
2013, added. “I guess it is part of Xi Jinping playing the
nationalist card. That’s my guess.”
Bill Bishop, a China
expert whose Sinocism newsletter tracks the country’s political
scene, agreed that Obama’s no-carpet welcome looked suspiciously
like a deliberate slight intended “to make the Americans look
diminished and weak”.
“It sure looks
like a straight up snub,” Bishop said. “This clearly plays very
much into the [idea]: ‘Look, we make the American president go out
of the ass of the plane.’”
Bishop added: “We’ve
no proof. It could clearly just be a cock-up but it would be a
stunningly large cock-up given how well these people plan for all
these events and especially for something like the G20.”
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“The idea that
they have been preparing for well over a year for the G20 but
suddenly there be a malfunction with the ramp just for one president
… that really strains strains credulity.”
China officials had
no comment on the reception offered to Obama.
Susan Rice, the US
national security adviser, admitted she had been surprised by the
handling of the president’s arrival. “They did things that
weren’t anticipated,” she told reporters.
The New York Times
said Rice had appeared “baffled and annoyed” that the president
had been forced to leave Air Force One through a door normally
reserved for high-security trips to places such as Afghanistan.
In the lead-up to
the final meeting between Obama and Xi, experts had predicted the
pair would seek to part ways on a positive note with the announcement
that the world’s two largest polluters would ratify the Paris
climate agreement.
However, Obama’s
unconventional welcome – and a series of subsequent skirmishes and
quarrels between Chinese and US officials and journalists – were a
reminder of the underlying tensions.
The Washington Post
said Obama’s bumpy landing in China was “a fitting reflection of
how the relationship between these two world powers has become frayed
and fraught with frustration”.
Official statements
issued by both sides on Saturday, as the pair held more than four
hours of bilateral meetings, hinted at some of the disagreements
between the world’s two largest economies.
According to a White
House statement, Obama told Xi of “America’s unwavering support
for upholding human rights”.
“China opposes any
other country interfering in its internal affairs in the name of
human rights issues,” Xi told Obama in response, according to
Xinhua, Beijing’s official news wire.
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In an interview with
CNN, Obama warned Beijing against muscle-flexing in the South China
Sea. Xi told Obama his country would “unswervingly safeguard” its
claims in the region.
Bishop said: “Other
than in climate, in most areas of the US-China relationship there is
increasing amounts of friction and some actually increasingly quite
hot friction around the South China Sea and some of these military
[interactions] in the region.”
“The US is looking
a little weak and a little tired and I think [Beijing is] happy to
put anybody in their place when they can. I think they see the
opportunity to make Obama look weak,” he added.
Both Bishop and
Guajardo said the reported confrontations between Chinese and US
officials and journalists following Obama’s arrival in Hangzhou
were par for the course in China.
“That is just
typical China. I remember when my president came, one of the Mexican
press corps came out of it with stitches,” Guajardo recalled.
But Obama’s
unceremonious arrival was unusual and surely deliberate, the former
Mexican ambassador added.
“Just as the
Chinese are about giving face they are also about not giving it and
letting you know that they are not giving it to you… They don’t
overlook these things by mistake. It’s not who they are. It’s not
the way they do these things,” he said.
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