Two Worlds, Two Dreams
By Oh Young-jin
Assistant Managing Editor
For people who want to take a break from watching hours of Olympic sports, here is a pop quiz question about a recent political affair that took place on the sidelines of the Summer Games in Beijing.
Question) Chinese President Hu Jintao held a summit with U.S. President George Bush. There were two interesting photos taken at the summit venue of the Zhongnanhai Compound ― one catching Bush in mid-stride walking toward Hu standing at the entrance of the conference building; the other, Bush turning his upper body to shake hands with Hu in a pre-summit photo op. Both photos showed Bush doing all the movement but Hu virtually still. What would you make out from these photos?
Obviously, there is no one correct answer to this question. For those who can have a good laugh about Bush holding the Stars and Stripes on the wrong side during the swimming competition at the National Aquatics Center, these photos can be taken as nothing unusual, the outgoing leader of the free world meeting with the leader of an emerging power.
However, for those who nit-pick every move made by global leaders, they can make a quite different reading, perhaps evoking the scene of an emperor of an old Chinese dynasty receiving the head of a vassal state on a tribute trip to the Forbidden City.
Let's click back and move to a luncheon hosted by Hu for visiting world leaders in the pre-Olympic ambience. Hu reportedly told the audience, ``The historic moment we all have long waited is arriving.''
Any reference to history by a Chinese leader is loaded with implications.
For the decades spanning the end of its last dynasty at the turn of the 20th century to the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, China has been better known to the outside world for its past than for its future potential.
The world treated it as an old story, like the museum nation of Egypt, with its status being a third-world nation stuck in a perpetual cycle of internal power struggle.
Then, China saw a major changeover in its leadership from Chairman Mao, who believed in the origin of power from the barrel of a gun, to Deng Xiaoping, a French-educated Marxist who tried to put a human face to socialism. We all know the rest of the story ― Deng's pragmatism turning his country into a global juggernaut.
That juggernaut has grown bigger thanks to the ingenuity of Deng's successors deftly juggling the two opposing concepts of profit-oriented market economy with one-party dictatorship. This Chinese juggernaut now appears to be unstoppable. Evidence is readily available. First, Beijing ignored international criticism and cracked down on Tibetan separatists by force. Chinese leaders are cozy with African dictators, supplying them with weapons and turning a blind eye to what they do with them.
The rest of the world is relegated to the role of a helpless bystander, some leaders trying to chastise Beijing with a lecture on morality or threats to boycott the opening of the Games.
Many of these lecture-giving leaders ended up among a crowd of 91,000 spectators at the Bird's Nest national stadium for the Aug. 8 opening gala.
They cited constructive engagement as the reason for their presence, but Hu had every reason to take it as a show of respect for the old power that is making its comeback to the center of world politics.
This Chinese resurgence is bound to clash with the U.S., the erstwhile big kid on the Asian neighborhood.
How Bush felt watching the Chinese surge up close is an open question, but the answer may be a complicated one, considering the weakened status of the world's only superpower. Bush can't waste any time in finding a solution, because Asian nations appear to be busy calculating the pros and cons in anticipation of a possible change of the neighborhood strong man. Would he use the Japan card to keep China in check or nudge North Korea in order to tilt back the balance of power? The Beijing Olympics' motto is ``One World One Dream'' but, in all likelihood, Presidents Hu and Bush are dreaming two different dreams that will not meet in one world.