Effective Subversion

by digby

James Fallows at the Atlantic wrote a series on the president’s trip to Asia that is well worth reading, especially if you would like a little more insight than “OMG! He Bowed, he Bowed!”

I don’t know if the following is correct, but I’d really like to believe it is:

Here is how it looked to a foreigner who has just written me — a person who has lived in China for two decades, still does business there, and speaks Mandarin:

“I’ve been monitoring the China internet in the wake of the town hall and, based on my observations of these things over the years I’m very much leaning toward the White House insider’s view — that the reach was vast and deep, in the many millions or tens of millions, though not necessarily entirely positive. But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:

‘Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are — when they’re in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that’s irresponsible, or — but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear. It forces me to examine what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.’

Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply — and potentially more “subversively” or “destabilizingly” — than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to “the Kremlin”] fears the most, and rightly so.”

It’s very hard to know what to make of trips like this, but if Obama could make that point in a way that resonates then good for him.

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