Without saying definitively he would not attend the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing one month from today, U.S. Senator Barack Obama said as president he would skip the ceremony without hearing from the Dalai Lama that there had been progress on the Tibet issue.

“In the absence of some sense of progress, in the absence of some sense from the Dalai Lama that there was progress, I would not have gone,” Obama said at a news conference, according to the Associated Press.

From a Chinese perspective, the statement that Obama would take cues from the Dalai Lama is quite bold and constitutes a public articulation of which side the candidate has chosen in the Dalai Lama–P.R.C. disputes. While few would be surprised to hear a Democratic candidate support human rights in Tibet, it’s diplomatically significant if enunciated.

The AP article notes that Obama had encouraged President George W. Bush to skip the ceremony, as had Senator John McCain in April.

McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent, also issued a hypothetical ultimatum, similarly saying that he would only attend the ceremony if he saw improvements on human rights issues. McCain’s April statement was in some ways stronger than Obama’s most recent one, though he did not allude to taking cues from the exiled Tibetan leader.

“If Chinese policies and practices do not change, I would not attend the opening ceremonies,” said the Arizona senator, who has clinched the GOP nomination for president. “It does no service to the Chinese government, and certainly no service to the people of China, for the United States and other democracies to pretend that the suppression of rights in China does not concern us. It does, will and must concern us.”

These statements, which apparently promise to show symbolic support in exchange for concessions on human rights issues, recall the early Bill Clinton administration principle of conditional engagement: The United States would work with China on trade in exchange for rights improvements. What the candidates haven’t mentioned is that when Clinton tried this tactic, it either failed or was abandoned in favor of, say, less-conditional engagement.

Could the candidates be reacting to George W. Bush’s friendly behavior toward China in the way that Clinton reacted to George H. W. Bush’s? The current president, for one, comes near toeing the Chinese line in his most recent statement, promising to attend the ceremony. Skipping the event would be “an affront to the Chinese people,” he said.

Olympic threats: really dumb. China: Bush’s diplomatic savior? The North Korea deal: not what the White House hoped. And China meets the U.S. Congress to plan for a post-Bush climate reality. Recent China–U.S. relations news.

• Steve Clemons agrees with me (OK, he agrees with James Fallows, whom I agree with) that “Boycotting the Olympics today or trying to preempt China’s hosting the games as Perle suggested in 2001 are hollow threats that perpetuate the mistaken notion that America is in a serious position to isolate China.” Clemons’ post today on China and his comments in the item below are worth attention.
• In a New York Times Week In Review piece today Steven Lee Meyers argues that George W. Bush is using China’s influence in Iran, North Korea, and Burma as a “diplomatic crutch”—that having spent much of his country’s international political capital, Bush is lucky to have China to turn to. Myers quotes U.S Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill as saying “China has become the first stop for any American diplomacy.”
• Not that the result in North Korea has been exactly what the Bush administration was hoping for, writes Richard Bernstein.
• I’m a bit late posting this, but Der Speigel reported a “secret” meeting between members of the U.S. Congress and Chinese National Development Reform Commission (NDRC) Deputy Chief Xie Zhenhue. The White House was reportedly left out of this meeting addressing post-Bush administration environmental policy. According to Speigel:
  

  High-ranking sources close to the participants of the meeting between the Chinese delgation and Congress said the Chinese sought to find out how determined Congress is to push through rigorous climate protection laws in the future. During the discussion, members of Congress made clear that they would soon like to vote on legislation that would set binding emissions limits. However, the members of Congress said they didn’t provide the Chinese with a firm timeline for when this might happen.

Shisaku has a snarky roundup of Abe Shinzo’s recent visit to the United States. Here’s the blog’s response to Abe’s hinting that maybe “the past is the past.”

“The 20th century was a century that human rights were violated in many parts of the world. So we have to make the 21st century a century — a wonderful century in which no human rights are violated. And I, myself, and Japan wish to make significant contributions to that end. And so I explained these thoughts to the President.”

First–uh, Abe-san, we are already six years into the 21st century. Believe me, rights have been violated.

Second–are you out of your freaking mind? Just because the date on Gregorian calendars start with a 2, we have to kiss off thinking about what happened in the past? (For all you on Jewish, Chinese or Hejirah calendars, you are not in the 21st century. You are on your own as to whether to violate or not violate human rights)

At Global Voices Online, John Kennedy translates a Chinese-language blog post called “Waiting for Bush to Reciprocate” (等着布什的回礼) The idea is that 33 people die on a pretty regular basis in China, and President Bush doesn’t always send his condolence straight away.

In America, everybody lowers the flag to half-mast for a week, and Mrs. Bush visited the campus where the slayings took place to express condolences in person. If our nation dealt with things this way, I imagine there wouldn’t be many days when the flag in Tiananmen Square would ever rise to the top of the flagpole, and our national leaders wouldn’t ever have much time to leave the country for visits. After these two disasters took place in our country, except for their relatives, how many people expressed sorrow for them? Yet the American government has turned the slayings into national mourning.

The ensuing argument seems to ask the United States to be more personable—that is to say, less statist. The implication is that if the Chinese government doesn’t respond as massively as the U.S. government might for a similar death toll, people should appeal to see how the communities affected are dealing with it. And if the “poor” people are mourning in earnest with little attention from the “rich,” the writer would have the United States show solidarity with the mourners.

If an exceptionally poor family approaches the bereavement of its family members with earnest, people from all corners of the land will come show their respects. To not go would be disrespectful.

I just wonder if this is actually true.

If an English-language article about Koizumi Junichiro ever appeared without the word “maverick,” I didn’t notice. But now Abe Shinzo might get to be one of the cool kids too. Bono praised Japan for its anti-poverty funding in the ’90s and its aid in Southeast Asia after meeting Abe Wednesday. And he may have called the new prime minister “cool.”

“I’ve always seen George Bush looking at my sunglasses … and George Bush never put them on,” Bono said. “The last pope put them on, and Prime Minister Abe — very cool.”

Reuters asserts that Bono was calling Abe cool, but I think he might have been referring to the act of putting on the sunglasses, not the politician himself. One way or another, we know Bono locates Abe on the “cool” scale somewhere between Koizumi and Bush, because he said he was disappointed not to have discussed music with Abe as he had with the Maverick. Not to worry, Bono said, “Next meeting, I’ll get him on that.”

Reuters reports that the leaders of the United States, Japan, and China will meet in Hanoi:

China, Japan and the United States will “exchange views on bilateral ties and international and regional issues of common concern” on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hanoi, the official Xinhua news agency reported in a brief dispatch.