Obama Breaks Protocol, Slights Top Chinese General
Gordon G. Chang
Contrary to Beijing’s expectation, President Obama declined a Pentagon request to receive Chinese General Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, while he was in Washington during his five-day visit in June. Fan, described by the South China Morning Post as “a military heavyweight and one of President Xi Jinping’s most trusted right-hand men,” is the first CMC vice chair in at least two decades [1]—perhaps the first ever, as some report [2]—not to meet with a sitting American leader during an official visit to Washington.
It appears Fan was slighted at the Pentagon as well. The general did not get the usual 19-gun salute at his welcoming ceremony, nor was it particularly well attended by senior American officers. In the end, the delegation was denied the DC pomp and ceremony and those prized White House photo ops that authoritarian regimes crave to show their legitimacy to audiences back home.
Some have attempted to explain these apparent diplomatic snubs by saying Beijing tried to keep Fan’s visit low-key. That, however, seems unlikely. Fan brought with him the largest contingent of People’s Liberation Army officers seen in Washington in recent years. And he broke precedent by bringing along the senior leadership of the PLA’s General Political Department, suggesting the Chinese did not intend the visit to fly under the radar.
Some say Fan received a cool welcome in Washington because ostentatious ceremony would have been embarrassing for the administration, especially after China’s rampant island-building in the South China Sea and the devastating cyber thefts from the Office of Personnel Management, widely blamed on Beijing.
In any event, a public presidential meeting with Fan would have given the press an opportunity to raise questions on the administration’s response to China’s provocative moves, and perhaps the president was not ready to answer questions of that sort.
If so, Obama cannot avoid the issues for long. Xi Jinping is scheduled to arrive in Washington in September. That trip is described as an official state visit. Presumably, Xi expects a South Lawn ceremony, complete with a 21-gun salute and formal dinner in the East Room.
Xi also serves as chairman of the Central Military Commission, and he has presided during a time of obvious Chinese assertion across a wide arc, from continual incursions into Indian-controlled territory in Ladakh in the south to violations of Japan’s territorial sovereignty around the Senkaku Islands in the north. Fan’s delegation inked an agreement [3] during the general’s visit on army-to-army dialogue, but there is no evidence of forward movement on big strategic issues during his Washington trip. And his visit came on the heels of the generally unproductive seventh session of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which wrapped up in Washington last week.
So Obama will have to confront troublesome disagreements with Beijing in September during the Chinese leader’s visit. After all, there is no possibility of avoiding Xi then.
Source URL:
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/gordon-g-chang/obama-breaks-protocol-slights-top-chinese-general
