China Threatens Obama Over Dalai Lama Meeting - Possible economic consequences

Updated February 02, 2010
China Threatens Obama Over Dalai Lama Meeting

AP

An Obama meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader would "seriously undermine the political foundation of Sino-U.S. relations," China warned Tuesday.

BEIJING -- Any meeting between President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama would harm bilateral relations, China warned Tuesday while repeating Beijing's refusal to discuss Tibet's status with the spiritual leader's envoys.

An Obama meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader would "seriously undermine the political foundation of Sino-U.S. relations," said Zhu Weiqun, executive deputy head of the Communist Party's United Front Work Department in charge of recent talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives.

Zhu was speaking at a news conference where he said Chinese officials told the envoys that Beijing would not make any compromises on its sovereignty over the Himalayan region and that both sides' views remained "sharply divided."

The warning to Obama comes after signals from U.S. officials in recent weeks that Obama might soon meet the exiled Tibetan leader -- something Chinese officials are keen to avoid before President Hu Jintao travels to Washington, possibly in April.

Zhu said any arguments that the Dalai Lama was just a religious figure were wrong, calling the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate the "head of a separatist group."

No date for Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama has been announced, but White House spokesman Mike Hammer said last month that "the President has made clear to the Chinese government that we intend to meet with the Dalai Lama, it has been his every intention." The White House did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday night.

Bilateral relations have already been strained by the U.S. announcement Friday that it planned to sell $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.

Beijing quickly suspended military exchanges with Washington and announced an unprecedented threat of sanctions against the U.S. companies involved in the sale.

Zhu did not give any details on what China would do if Obama meets the Dalai Lama. "We will take corresponding measures to make the relevant countries realize their mistakes."

Representatives of the United Front met over the weekend with two emissaries of the Dalai Lama for their first talks in 15 months, but Zhu said China would discuss only the future of the exiled spiritual leader -- not any greater autonomy for Tibet.

"There is no room for negotiation or concession on the part of the central government on these issues," Zhu said.

At the last talks in 2008, China rejected a proposal presented by the Dalai Lama's envoys for a way for Tibetans to achieve more autonomy under the Chinese constitution -- a key demand of the minority community.

During this latest round of talks, the envoys made no revisions or concessions to the proposal, particularly on the position that the Tibetan government-in-exile represented the interests of the Tibetan community, Zhu said.

Zhu said the Chinese government was the only legitimate representative of the Tibetan people, not the envoys sent by the Dalai Lama. He said Beijing was open to future talks but only to discuss the return of the Dalai Lama, who is 75.

"We do want to make it a channel for the Dalai Lama to redress his mistakes," Zhu said. "We do hope that in the remainder of his life, he can think well about his own future. We don't want him to end up in foreign soil."

Zhu said China arranged for the envoys to visit late communist founder Mao Zedong's former residence in Shaoshan in central Hunan province, as well as to see a region home to Miao and Tujia ethnic minorities.

China maintains that Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries, but many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for much of its history.

Beijing demonizes the Dalai Lama and says he seeks to destroy China's sovereignty by pushing independence for Tibet. The Dalai Lama has maintained for decades he wants some form of autonomy that would allow Tibetans to freely practice their culture, language and religion under China's rule, not independence.

Tibetan areas have been tense in recent years, with the minority community complaining about restrictions on Buddhism, government propaganda campaigns against their revered Dalai Lama, and an influx of Chinese migrants that leave Tibetans feeling marginalized. Those feelings boiled over in deadly anti-Chinese riots in 2008 that shocked Beijing's leaders.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...s-obama-dalai-lama-meeting/ /?test=latestnews

 

obama would be the last one to pass on an exotic trip with the family.

 

We're like begging them to dump all their US Treasuries.... Maybe our politicians really are stupid, who would've thought. LOL

 

time to slap 100% tariffs on Chinese goods. After all, who has the huge trade surplus with Who?

China holds other nations like Tibet, Taiwan and others as if they somehow are "renegade provinces"?

Let them replace their trillion dollar surpluses trying to sell their plastic toys to their hundreds of millions still living on subsistence farming...

 

Well said!

 

China knows damn well that if we don't buy their shit, their unemployment rate will surge. Guess what that means?

 

Obama Plan to Meet Dalai Lama Prompts New Friction (Update1)
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By Hans Nichols

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama plans to meet with the Dalai Lama later this month, ignoring Chinese warnings that it would further damage U.S.-China ties already strained by a proposed arms sales to Taiwan and a dispute over censorship of the Internet.

“The Dalai Lama is an internationally respected religious and cultural leader, and the president will meet with him in that capacity,” Deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said yesterday.

Burton declined to say when or where the meeting might occur. An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it would be later this month when the Tibetan spiritual leader is scheduled to be in the U.S.

Friction between the world’s No. 1 and No. 3 economies may threaten U.S. goals for thwarting the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, reaching a global accord on climate change and addressing trade imbalances. It also creates challenges for U.S. companies such as Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Mountain View, California-based Google Inc.

Obama’s decision to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader will bring the U.S.-China relationship closer to a “tipping point,” said Christopher McNally, an analyst at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

“The Chinese are really pushing back” against U.S. actions, he said. “They are pushing back because they feel much more self-confident in their international position.”

Threat to Cooperation

Zhu Weiqun, a Communist Party official who manages Tibet affairs, told reporters in Beijing yesterday that a meeting between the U.S. president and the Dalai Lama would “seriously undermine the political foundation of Sino-U.S. relations” and “threaten trust and cooperation.”

Today, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, responding to Burton, said in a statement that Chinese leaders had urged Obama during his visit to Beijing in November “not to allow ‘Tibetan separatist’ forces to use U.S. territory to engage in anti-China separatist activities.”

“China is firmly opposed to the Dalai Lama visiting the U.S., and is firmly opposed to the Dalai Lama having any kind of contact with the U.S. leader,” Ma said.

Taiwan Arms Sales

Yesterday Ma also reiterated China’s threat to impose sanctions on companies involved in U.S. arms sales to Taiwan announced by the Pentagon last week.

The proposed sales include United Technologies UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters valued at $3.1 billion and Boeing Harpoon missiles costing $37 million.

China and the U.S. also are at odds over censorship of Google’s Chinese search engine. Google, which runs the world’s most popular Internet search site, said Jan. 12 it would stop censoring its search results as required by the government in China and might end operations there.

That followed what the company described as an infiltration of its technology and the Gmail Internet e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Ten days later, China criticized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a speech in which she said the communist country’s Internet controls might hamper its development.

Trade Friction

The political difficulties coincide with rising conflicts over bilateral trade. The U.S. is China’s biggest trading partner and China is the second-biggest U.S. trading partner after Canada, with two-way trade totaling $409.2 billion in 2008. China’s $266.3 billion trade surplus with the U.S. that year helped spur its purchases of U.S. treasuries.

The confrontation has domestic political implications in both nations. China’s Communist elite is jostling for influence as it grooms new leaders to take over in 2012.

“They are quite insecure of the Communist party’s long- term position in China,” McNally said.

In the U.S., congressional elections in November may increase pressure on the Obama administration to stand firm.

“The Chinese test and they push and they probe,” said Representative Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican and frequent critic of China’s human rights record. “Hopefully the administration won’t blink.”

Obama didn’t see the Dalai Lama when the Tibetan leader was in Washington in October. White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said at the time that the president would meet with the Dalai Lama sometime after Obama returned from a trip to Asia in November that included a stop in China.

November Summit

At the close of his formal meetings with President Hu Jintao in Beijing, Obama said that while Tibet is part of China, the U.S. “supports the early resumption on dialogue between the Chinese government and representatives of the Dalai Lama to resolve any concerns and differences.”

Burton said Obama told China’s leaders during that visit that he would meet with the Dalai Lama.

Every president since George H.W. Bush, who served in office 1989-1993, has sat down with the Dalai Lama, usually in private and frequently prompting criticism from the Chinese government.

In October 2007, President George W. Bush met the Dalai Lama in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, the first time a U.S. president had met with him in a public setting. The event didn’t set back ties with China, though then-Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Jianchao said the gesture “severely hurt the Chinese people’s feelings.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Washington at Hnichols2@bloomberg.net; Edwin Chen in Nashua, New Hampshire at Echen32@bloomberg.net;

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aIyhcl.cWKk0&pos=9

 

China should dump the dollar and buy gold.

 

How will they afford the gold? Once they "dump" the dollar, it's value will be a fraction of what it is right now.