The Sino-Arab Axis
A friend of mine passed along the following speech by Chas Freeman, Chas Freeman, a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Freeman is an accomplished Chinese history scholar and linguist (both Mandarin and Arabic), President of the Middle East Policy Council, Co-Chair of the U.S.-China Policy Council, and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. He gave the speech at the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
The Arabs Take a Chinese Wife:
Sino-Arab Relations in the Decade to Come
Is China a friend or an enemy? An opportunity or a menace? Should we fête its leaders or fend them off? When it became apparent that President Hu (on his recent visit to Washington) would not be coming to present, on bended knee, major concessions that would appease anti-China sentiment in Washington, many inside the Beltway questioned why he was coming at all. In an ironic echo of the arrogant attitudes that ultimately did in the Chinese Empire, these American versions of the palace eunuchs of the Forbidden City asked, if Mr. Hu wasn't leading a tribute mission and wouldn't kowtow to our emperor, why should they go at all out of their way to be nice to him? So they didn't.
I mention all this because, as some of you know, President Hu flew directly from the United States to Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where there was no confusion at all about how to treat him. He was greeted there as a friend from afar who should be treated with respect and courted as the leader of a rising power. He was, in short, welcomed in a manner calculated to make him feel welcome and to want to come back. It was a really telling contrast.
