Bush and Chávez on Equal Ground in China

Chinochano notes [es] that most visits by foreign heads of state to China result in the same press release, names changed. In Spanish from the blog, here are the two hypothetical* examples.

George W. Bush Hugo Chávez
Pekín, 2 nov 2007 — El presidente de China, Hu Jintao, sostuvo conversaciones hoy aquí con su homólogo estadounidense, George Bush, quien está realizando una visita de Estado a China.Ambos líderes expresaron su satisfacción por el desarrollo de las relaciones bilaterales y acordaron profundizar la cooperación entre los dos países.Desde el establecimiento de las relaciones diplomáticas entre los dos países hace 35 años, la cooperación amistosa China-EEUU ha presenciado un desarrollo sin contratiempos, gracias al entendimiento y confianza mutuos, dijo Hu, quien expresó su aprecio por el apoyo de EEUU a la política de “una sola China”. Pekín, 9 nov 2007 — El presidente de China, Hu Jintao, sostuvo conversaciones hoy aquí con su homólogo venezolano, Hugo Chávez, quien está realizando una visita de Estado a China.Ambos líderes expresaron su satisfacción por el desarrollo de las relaciones bilaterales y acordaron profundizar la cooperación entre los dos países.Desde el establecimiento de las relaciones diplomáticas entre los dos países hace 30 años, la cooperación amistosa China-Venezuela ha presenciado un desarrollo sin contratiempos, gracias al entendimiento y confianza mutuos, dijo Hu, quien expresó su aprecio por el apoyo de Venezuela a la política de “una sola China”.
Emphasis mine. I’m leaving out one on the Klingon state visit.

The sentence in bold had caught my eye in an English release when Bush and Hu last met. Without looking it up, it says that Hu “expressed his appreciation for United States/Venezuelan support of the ‘one China policy.’” Just thought I’d post this, as it seems to me that the United States, long walking a diplomatic tightrope on the issue, is one of the biggest substantial factors in why Taiwan remains how it is—despite decades of lip service about “one China.” Doesn’t mean you don’t get thanks for lipservice though.

* I had failed to make clear that these aren’t real releases. I’ve been fooled before, but this was just sloppy writing.

Posted

in

by

Graham Webster

Tags:

, , ,

Comments

2 responses to “Bush and Chávez on Equal Ground in China”

  1. chinochano Avatar
    chinochano

    Thanks for mentioning my post!

    Just to clarify, the two articles about Chavez and Bush were not real but written by me, although they express without exxageration the repetitive Chinese propaganda that actually exists.

    In real newspapers, maybe the articles about such visits wouldn’t be so similar, but the ideas they express are always the ideas I wrote (cooperation, Taiwan, n years of diplomatic relations, etc).

    And sometimes yes, the visits are written using some kind of pattern, specially when the visitors belong to very small countries.

    Reply
  2. Graham Webster Avatar
    Graham Webster

    Thanks for the clarification — I’ve made that clear in the post. I should be more careful writing about your antics!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *