The showdown puts the Obama administration in a sensitive spot. | AP Photo
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By JOSH GERSTEIN | 10/24/14 5:12 AM EDT
When it comes to the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, President Barack Obama looks like he’s trying not to be the bull in the China shop, or rather in the U.S.-China relationship: He’s wary of any public moves that could shatter fragile efforts to find common ground ahead of a rare trip to Beijing days after the midterms.
Despite calls from some American lawmakers and democracy advocates in Hong Kong that the president speak out more forcefully on the side of student demonstrators, who want less interference from Beijing, Obama has publicly held his tongue.
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The showdown puts the Obama administration in a sensitive spot, highlighting tensions between U.S. interests in fostering democracy and in forging a tighter relationship with China. The U.S. response to Hong Kong unrest raises questions about America’s commitment to human rights issues and the administration’s much-discussed push for a pivot to Asia.
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So far, Obama has been helped in his dilemma by a preoccupied press and public. Elections, Ebola and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have all sucked up attention, allowing the administration to get by with a few bland statements. The media coverage of pro-democracy demonstrations and calls from sympathetic members of Congress have been more anemic than usual for pro-democracy showdowns in a strategically significant part of the world.
“It is important for the United States to speak up because it does matter to China what the United States thinks and feels,” former Hong Kong chief secretary Anson Chan said Thursday in a telephone interview from the Chinese territory. “It needs to be done both in public and in private behind closed doors.”
“I think it would definitely be helpful for Obama to choose some occasion to articulate U.S. concerns,” she added.
Before POLITICO raised the issue Thursday, the last official comments from the White House on Hong Kong came Oct. 1, when press secretary Josh Earnest answered a question about the protests by saying the U.S. was monitoring the situation “closely.”
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“The United States supports universal suffrage in Hong Kong, in accordance with the basic law, and we support the aspirations of the Hong Kong people,” Earnest said. “We believe that an open society with the highest possible degree of autonomy and governed by the rule of law is essential for Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity.”
In a readout later that day, the White House said Obama and National Security Adviser Susan Rice discussed the issue during a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, telling him that they were following the situation closely and hoped that “differences between Hong Kong authorities and protestors” would be addressed peacefully. “The United States has consistently supported the open system that is essential to Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity, universal suffrage, and the aspirations of the Hong Kong people,” the statement said.
Those comments weren’t sufficient for a bipartisan group of senators, who a week later sent Obama a letter urging him to speak out against Beijing’s insistence that it be permitted to approve or reject candidates for future elections in Hong Kong. “The Administration should voice U.S. support for full democracy in Hong Kong and make clear that it is in the Chinese Government’s interest to abide by its commitment to one country, two systems,” the letter urged.
Instead, though, the West Wing has been quiet on the issue in recent weeks, as officials prepare for Obama’s meetings in Beijing with President Xi Jinping on Nov. 12. And no one at the White House has come under intense questioning from the media about the volatile situation. No reporter appears to have raised the issue in the past three weeks at White House press briefings either in Washington or on the road.
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Asked Thursday about the calls for a public statement from Obama, National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the administration has been clear in its support for democracy in Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong’s open society, rule of law, press and other freedoms, and free market are based on principles that Americans and Hong Kongers share,” he said. “The U.S. has a deep and abiding interest in Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity. Our long-standing policy is supportive of a high degree of autonomy mandated by Hong Kong’s Basic Law and consistent with the principle of the ‘one country, two systems.’”
U.S. officials also said the Hong Kong issue was raised by Secretary of State John Kerry during meetings he held in Boston this past weekend with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi. A senior State Department official described the matter as “very much in the news and on people’s minds,” but noted that a litany of concerns, including Iran’s nuclear program and the threats posed by Ebola and the Islamic State, were also discussed in their conversations. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to elaborate.
“We’ll keep raising this, privately and publicly,” insisted another administration official who asked not to be named.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/hong-kong-protests-obama-112157.html#ixzz3HLBLveS4
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/hong-kong-protests-obama-112157.html
