That is not good because I think he really liked China.
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Former US president Jimmy Carter was mistreated during his visit to China in September despite his contribution to the establishment of formal ties between Washington and Beijing 35 years ago, according to a scholar who was traveling with him.
Orville Schell, director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, wrote in The New York Review of Books that what Carter received was "chiru"–which means humiliation in Chinese.
The former president, seeking to raise funds for his Carter Center, was given a fee to present and speak in various locations in China. On his first stop at Renmin University of China in Beijing, Carter was put on the panel at a global finance forum to talk about business topics instead of speaking about the US-China relationship, as Schell had imagined.
Carter, who was given a short time to present, spoke after an address from the university president and talks from trading specialists. Only one single question was addressed directly to him.
"Watching this former US president treated so offhandedly highlighted how the power relationship between the two countries is shifting: it is now not only the West that has wealth," Schell wrote.
The Chinese side blocked a visiting scholar from delivering a speech at the Great Hall of the People without warning and Carter's itinerary for Shanghai and Qingdao was changed without his approval.
Carter and China's president, Xi Jinping, have met four times in the past, but neither Xi nor Premier Li Keqiang showed up to greet the 90-year-old former US president. At a dinner hosted by Vice President Li Yuanchao at the Great Hall of the People, Carter, his wife Rosalynn and other American visitors sat at half-empty tables. They were told that President Xi had met with Zimbabwean president and international pariah Robert Mugabe just days earlier and was in the Great Hall of the People toasting Malaysia's head of state Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah the very moment of the dinner.
"But Xi didn't stop by the Carter dinner to say a word," Schell wrote in the article.
Schell picked up six newspapers and found that none of them had mentioned Carter's visit. Only the English-language China Daily carried a brief article titled "Turkey Feast Honors China-US Relations" and it was published with a photo not of Carter but of some student performers at the banquet.
"At one point I heard from sources close to him that Carter was upset enough to consider just packing up and going home," Schell wrote.
"What made the dinner in the Great Hall all the more unsettling was the feeling that a whiff of "humiliation"–chiru–hovered over it."
"The [Communist] Party has for many years emphasized China's history of being humiliated and exploited by foreign powers. To feel a gust of Chinese reaction now coming back the other way left me wanting to leave early that night," Schell said.
Carter was president when the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, a decisive moment in the history of Sino-US relations. In this light, the former president's reception in China appears to be a remarkable slight.
Jimmy Carter humiliated on recent China visit says scholar Politics News WantChinaTimes.com
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Former US president Jimmy Carter was mistreated during his visit to China in September despite his contribution to the establishment of formal ties between Washington and Beijing 35 years ago, according to a scholar who was traveling with him.
Orville Schell, director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, wrote in The New York Review of Books that what Carter received was "chiru"–which means humiliation in Chinese.
The former president, seeking to raise funds for his Carter Center, was given a fee to present and speak in various locations in China. On his first stop at Renmin University of China in Beijing, Carter was put on the panel at a global finance forum to talk about business topics instead of speaking about the US-China relationship, as Schell had imagined.
Carter, who was given a short time to present, spoke after an address from the university president and talks from trading specialists. Only one single question was addressed directly to him.
"Watching this former US president treated so offhandedly highlighted how the power relationship between the two countries is shifting: it is now not only the West that has wealth," Schell wrote.
The Chinese side blocked a visiting scholar from delivering a speech at the Great Hall of the People without warning and Carter's itinerary for Shanghai and Qingdao was changed without his approval.
Carter and China's president, Xi Jinping, have met four times in the past, but neither Xi nor Premier Li Keqiang showed up to greet the 90-year-old former US president. At a dinner hosted by Vice President Li Yuanchao at the Great Hall of the People, Carter, his wife Rosalynn and other American visitors sat at half-empty tables. They were told that President Xi had met with Zimbabwean president and international pariah Robert Mugabe just days earlier and was in the Great Hall of the People toasting Malaysia's head of state Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah the very moment of the dinner.
"But Xi didn't stop by the Carter dinner to say a word," Schell wrote in the article.
Schell picked up six newspapers and found that none of them had mentioned Carter's visit. Only the English-language China Daily carried a brief article titled "Turkey Feast Honors China-US Relations" and it was published with a photo not of Carter but of some student performers at the banquet.
"At one point I heard from sources close to him that Carter was upset enough to consider just packing up and going home," Schell wrote.
"What made the dinner in the Great Hall all the more unsettling was the feeling that a whiff of "humiliation"–chiru–hovered over it."
"The [Communist] Party has for many years emphasized China's history of being humiliated and exploited by foreign powers. To feel a gust of Chinese reaction now coming back the other way left me wanting to leave early that night," Schell said.
Carter was president when the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, a decisive moment in the history of Sino-US relations. In this light, the former president's reception in China appears to be a remarkable slight.
Jimmy Carter humiliated on recent China visit says scholar Politics News WantChinaTimes.com
