Great Wall of Fluff
Editorial - The New York Times
Sunday, April 23, 2006
It's hard to imagine how a meeting between the leaders of the world's two most powerful nations could seem insignificant. But that's what happened by the time the White House finished downgrading the protocol, lowering the expectations and erasing the substance for President Hu Jintao's visit.
It's not as if presidents of China came to the White House very often. (The last time was nine years ago.) And it's not as if there were no issues of immense importance. (Just take the world's dwindling fossil fuels and growing nuclear arsenals, then move on to trade and human rights.)
Surely Presidents Bush and Hu could have given the impression that they were talking over important matters. Instead all they appeared to do was agree to disagree and offer up a series of smiling photo ops in which there was no substance behind the smiles. Mr. Bush could not even manage to give Mr. Hu the state dinner he wanted, so the Chinese leader made his first stop in the other Washington and met with the head of Microsoft before the leader of the free world.
Any progress, no matter how small, on the really big issues like energy and nonproliferation would have required the two presidents to spend major political capital. But no capital spending plans were announced — perhaps because Mr. Bush does not have a lot to spend and Mr. Hu is not willing to dip into his own account. Or perhaps that might have gotten in the way of the choreography, which a Falun Gong protester managed to disrupt anyway.
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Hello China is eating up oil all over the world. With No Human Rights issues to stop them. If we think gas is high now just wait unitl there done. Gas will be the least of our worries. Americans trade deficit to China is gross. That simple we are feeding them, so they can eat us latter. I say we stop feeding the sleeping giant. GO back to American made products. All the politicians & Economy planners see the big picture they have to it's on the BIG SCREEN even ma and pa kettle can read the writing on the wall.