Questions about the questions as POTUS gears up for Shanghai town hall
SHANGHAI _ President Obama’s first big event in China happens Monday, when he holds a town hall meeting in Shanghai. It should be interesting because Chinese will get to ask him questions in addition to hearing his prepared remarks.
The on-site audience will include more than 400 students, and questions also are expected to come via the Internet. The forum also is to be televised. It’s not yet clear just how many questions the president will take, or precisely how questions were screened (or whether any of the town hall coverage will be blacked out or cut-away from in China by government censors depending on what’s said. That happened in China with part of Obama’s inaugural address).
A White House aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make a statement, said that the students in the audience were selected by their universities, that President Obama would decide which of them to call on, and that he’d also take some questions submitted to the U.S. Embassy from Chinese “netizens.”
The White House aide couldn't speak to how Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, was handling the questions they collected. Xinhua's online site asked Chinese to forward their questions for Obama. So did several other online forums. Xinhuanet.com alone drew 3,290 reponses as of last count. A session just on Tibet was being conducted by huanqiu.com
Questions on such forums are all over the map:
Why does Obama deserve the Nobel Peace Prize when the U.S. is engaged in two wars? Why is the U.S. open to the Dalai Lama, and how would Obama feel if Chinese embraced a leader considered an enemy of the U.S.?
Do U.S. taxpayers underwrite First Lady Michelle Obama’s fancy wardrobe? Does Obama like Kung Pao chicken, and how much wine can he drink at one sitting?
Will Obama elaborate on his stance on Taiwan? How can the U.S. and China get North Korea to denuclearize? How can the U.S. guarantee the security of debt held by China? Will Obama lift restrictions on the export of high technology and weapons to China?
That’s just a sampling.
-Margaret Talev in Shanghai and Athena Zhao in Beijing
angelight what did any of what you wrote have to do with the article at hand. its now two days old and i guess this was even a very well received as there are so few comments about the article. might point was going to be that a chinese town hall would have about as much chance of a hard question as one of obamas election run townhalls did
Posted by: howell clark | November 18, 2009 at 05:32 PM
The GOP Party of No and Fear are unable to govern and when one does try to Govern and accomplish things for the American people like healthcare, raising the minimum wage or continuing unemployment benefits, they continue to "huff and puff" and spew fear in the air in hopes that people will continue to stay depressed and afraid thereby immobilizing and paralyzing them to do anything at all. Now the GOP are huffing and puffing about the Obama Decesion of having the terrorists being tried in open court in New York. Of course, we should bring these men to Justice, this should have been done a long time ago. GOP are just mad and angry that they could not accomplish this very basic task of holding these terrorists accountable for their acts! I would not even be surprised if Team Obama finds Bin Laden, something Bush & Co. were also incapable of doing. Would this anger the GOP also? Probably!
As far as Obama bowing to the Japanese the Bible teaches us in Matthew 20:26 "It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant." So by bowing, President Obama is showing that he is, indeed, a Great Man!
Posted by: Angellight | November 16, 2009 at 03:50 PM