XI JINPING ORDERED TO ROLL OFF RED CARPET AND TAKE AWAY STAIRCASE WHEN US PRESIDENT OBAMA ARRIVES TO HANGZHOU FOR G20 SUMMIT
Sunday, September 04, 2016
 |
| Dirty game of China's Xi Jinping to welcome US President Barack Obama: No Air-staircase, no Red Carpet.. |
 |
| President Obama used the belly airstair of the Air Force One |
 |
| Red Carpet for Theresa May, PM of UK |
 |
| Red Carpet for Mexican President |
 |
| Red Carpet and honoring ceremony for Indian Prime Minister |
 |
| Red Carpet for UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon |
 |
| Red Carpet for French President |
 |
| Red Carpet for Canadian President |
While China's
Authority welcomed all other World Leaders of different G20 Countries with
diplomatic formalities such as Red Carpet, Honor Salutation, and flowers, but when the
U.S. Air Force One arrived at the Hangzhou International Airport, China's
President Xi Jinping ordered to roll off the Red Carpet and removed the
Air-staircase so that President Barack Obama and his American delegation got
locked in the American presidential Airplane.
After a period of
chaos, President Barack Obama and his American delegation had to sort out of
the Air Force One by using the small belly ladder of the plane.
Clearly this is a
political power play for Xi Jinping, who wants to stir up nationalism for the
Chinese people to think that now America is weak and China is the strongest
country of the World in economy and in military power.
This is a dirty game
of a calculated diplomatic snub that decorates a big mess to China and to Xi
Jinping's honor.
Please read the
report from the Guardian online at:
VietPress USA
www.vietpressusa.com
oOo
Barack Obama 'deliberately snubbed' by Chinese in chaotic
arrival at G20
The US president was denied the usual red carpet welcome and
forced to ‘go out of the ass’ of Air Force One, observers say
Sunday
4 September 2016 03.27 EDT
China’s leaders have been accused
of delivering a calculated diplomatic snub to Barack Obama after
the US president was not provided with a staircase to leave his plane during
his chaotic arrival in Hangzhou before the start of the G20.
Chinese
authorities have rolled out the red carpet for leaders including India’s
prime minister, Narendra Modi, the
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the South
Korean president, Park Geun-hye, Brazil’s
president, Michel Temer, and the
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 on to a red carpet on the tarmac below 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 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 can make the American president go out of the ass of the
plane.’”
Obama exits Air Force One from the usual top
door on Midway Atoll two days before his arrival in China. Photograph: Carolyn
Kaster/AP
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. 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 credulity.”
A Chinese foreign ministry
official involved in the visit denied it had been a snub, telling
the South China Morning Post the
US delegation had declined to use the usual rolling red-carpet staircase.
“It would
do China no good in treating Obama rudely,” the official, who declined to be
named, was quoted as saying.
“China
provides a rolling staircase for every arriving state leader, but the US side
complained that the driver doesn’t speak English and can’t understand security
instructions from the United States; so China proposed that we could assign a
translator to sit beside the driver, but the US side turned down the proposal
and insisted that they didn’t need the staircase provided by the airport,” the
official added.
The US
president offered a diplomatic reply when asked to comment on the airport
“kerfuffle” on Sunday during a joint press conference with Theresa May.
“I
wouldn’t over-crank the significance of it because, as I said, this is not the
first time that these things happen and it doesn’t just happen here. It happens
in a lot of places including, by the way, sometimes our allies,” Obama said,
adding that “none of this detracts from the broader scope of the relationship”.
Obama
suggested his Chinese hosts might have found the size of the US delegation “a
little overwhelming”.
“We’ve got
a lot of planes, a lot of helicopters, a lot of cars and a lot of guys. If you
are a host country, sometimes it may feel a little bit much.”
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.
British prime minister Theresa May and
chancellor Philip Hammond are given the full red carpet treatment on arrival in
Hangzhou on Sunday. Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Images
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”.
“I think
this time … maybe the seams were showing a little more than usual in terms of
some of the negotiations and jostling that takes place behind the scenes,”
Obama admitted on Sunday.
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.
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 thereported
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.
VietPress USA News Agency.
www.Vietpressusa.com
