Jianying Zha meets Obama
January 20th, 2011
Last Thursday, a select group of five experts on China were asked to meet with President Obama to discuss issues of human rights and reform ahead of a state visit by President Hu Jintao this week. Jianying Zha, the India China Institute’s representative in China, was part of this group, and offered her views and advice.
Zha is a writer and an expert in Chinese pop culture and media, giving her a vantage point that goes beyond the state-run media. Zha began by remarking on the natural comparison between India and China on the issues of democracy and modes of development, and mentioned some works done by ICI’s fellows program as a source of further information and insight.
Zha then summed up current China as undergoing “a moment of great pride and great anxiety”—pride over the achievements that have been made in the economic reform of the past thirty years, and anxiety over a host of difficult challenges in terms of corruption and inequality, upgrading the economy and deepening the reform. She noted that though the Chinese are schooled on nationalism and can be
prickly about Western criticism, there have also been lots of internal debates about constitutional democracy as Chinese citizens have grown more conscious of their rights. She advised President Obama on the importance of addressing human rights issues with cultural sensitivity. She raised the point in particular that these universal rights are also guaranteed in the Chinese constitution, and there have been many lively discussions among the Chinese themselves about how to enact the Chinese constitution.
Her point appears to have been well received by President Obama. The New York Times reported, in a front page article on January 20, that Obama “called on China to live up to human rights values that he said were enshrined in the Chinese Constitution,” to which Hu Jintao responded by saying “China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights,” but “China is a developing country with a huge population, and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform. In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development. And a lot still needs to be done in China, in terms of human rights.” This unusually pointed exchange between the two presidents, at the widely watched joint press conference, is certainly worth noting for its candid yet positive tone.
Below are links to further coverage of this meeting.
CNN: Another Long March: China’s Human Rights Struggles
The Washington Post: Ahead of visit by China’s Hu, Obama meets with advocates for human rights
The New York Times : Obama Pushes Hu on Rights but Stresses Ties to China