PandaPassport.com – China Blog

I was just reading a pretty fascinating article over on The Guardian’s website entitled How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room. Whether China was actually at fault here, I can’t say for sure. I suspect they are, but of course I was not in the room.

The one thing that I did take notice of in this discussion was that the Chinese reportedly used a tactic that I had seen before many times when I worked in China. They imposed a delay:

The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

I remember when I taught at a Chinese university, any problems or complaints I had concerning my housing needed to go through a hierarchical chain of command. Invariably the result of such grievances was no result at all, and I was left with the all-too-common ‘mei banfa‘ (there’s nothing I can do) feeling. Unfortunately such a structure results in messages being diluted both on the way up and down the ladder.

It took me a while to realize that while I should be respectful of the local culture, I should not mine to be trampled upon either. On a few occasions I passed the message up the chain that it hurt my feelings that leaders did not consider my situation important enough to deal with me directly. And while I’d love end off here by saying that this tactic worked like a charm, it did not. But some progress was made, and that was indeed an improvement.

I don’t have much of a political mind, but when I see news stories like this one I can’t help but wonder at what point people are going to stop tippy-toeing around hurting Chinese feelings. Since when did mighty superpowers possess the sensitivity of 3-year-old girls?

It would delight me to no end to hear Obama say, “You know what Premier Wen, it really hurt my feelings and the feelings of the America people that you did not consider us deserving of a face-to-face meeting with you.”