诗经 爱情:Beijing needs change: Outgoing envoy to China...

来源：百度文库 编辑：九乡新闻网 时间：2024/04/29 19:04:39

Beijing needs change: Outgoing envoy to China speaks like President of America

huntman.jpg (13.22 KB)
2011-4-8 11:04
US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman gives the annual Barnett-Oksenberg lecture on Sino-American Relations in Shanghai on April 6, 2011.



In his what he billed as his final speech as Washington’s ambassador to Beijing before returning to the U.S. for a possible presidential bid, Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. sounded more like he was urging change in Zhongnanhai than in the White House.


Speaking a few days after his boss President Barack Obama kicked off his reelection campaign, the former republican governor of Utah offered nothing on his own possible U.S. presidential challenge.


Instead, Mr. Huntsman spoke of how relations need to improve between Washington and Beijing — largely serving the ball into China’s court.


“Like it or not, the eyes of the world now turn to the United States and China,” Mr. Huntsman said during his National Committee on United States-China Relations’s sixth annual Barnett-Oksenberg Lecture (full text here). “Our challenge is to find ways to strengthen habits of cooperation between our countries for the benefit of our citizens and people far beyond our borders.”


For a man who learned to speak Mandarin knocking on doors as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, it perhaps isn’t surprising he sees the key to understanding between the two powerful countries as consistent human interaction “between equals.” He isn’t calling for a Twitter or Facebook revolution, describing those devices as “only tools” that pale in comparison to “heart to heart” relationships.


Mr. Huntsman sounded bruised by a difficult tenure with Beijing: an unsuccessful summit by his president, arms sales to Taiwan that left the U.S. locked out of dialogue with Beijing, loggerheads over relations with North Korea, plus clashes over issues like freedom of expression and human rights that he called “bedrock” but which also made him persona non grata in China’s press.


While 51-year-old Mr. Huntsman would almost be certain to tout his understanding of China in a presidential campaign, he sounded as if he thought the more important personnel change for Sino-U.S. relations would be new blood in the Chinese leadership compound of Zhongnanhai. “Today’s leaders may struggle with the legacy of outdated ideologies or past differences,” he said. But, he added, the next generation “will carry with it a profoundly more world outlook”


The soon-to-be former ambassador, who joked in Mandarin during his 30 minute address, said his family’s years in Beijing have been “the most exhilarating two years of our lives.”


Mr. Huntsman, who in 1971 carried Henry Kissinger’s briefcase as the then-Secretary of State headed for secret meetings in China and served on President Regan’s 1984 advance team, said he wants the relationship to progress further than the already once “unimaginable” heights it has already attained.


He said the nations need to foster “habits of cooperation,” and part of the effort will be a better understanding by Americans of what China has been through in the past 100 years.


But he ladled on criticism of China, in particular its social policies, hinting strongly of the problems faced during his ambassadorship.


In other comments, it was clear he was scolding China: “Cutting off dialogue and suppressing the news media does not help us understand each other.”


“Turning the relationship on and off in reaction to unwelcome events is inconsistent,” he added. “Canceling meetings as a sign of displeasure will not encourage greater respect for each other’s views.”


“We cannot move forward, ladies and gentlemen, if when differences emerge only one of us is fully committed and fully engaged,” he said, concluding that “cooperation is not a concession but rather a sign of confidence. Confidence in each other.”


Mr. Huntsman is right. “Like it or not, the eyes of the world now turn to the United States and China.” The experience as ambassador to Beijing must teach him another thing: changes (or reform, if is favored) in Beijing’s leadership will be unfolding according to actual condition in China, not the will of president of America, no matter the name of it is Barack Obama or Jon M. Huntsman.
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