The full pomp and ceremony of the U.S. government welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao with a full state banquet during his visit to Washington, D.C. this week. Such was the solicitous statecraft of a president who knows the financial power that the Chinese state wields and sought to flatter its pride and soothe its discomforts. The Obama administration should take the opposite approach from such obsequiousness. Only calculated mischief and rude discourtesy are the appropriate salutations to a police state often characterized by the repression of its people and the intimidation and occupation of its neighbors. Such brashness also happens to be good diplomacy.
Hu's diplomatic visit to the United States was not intended to accomplish much in the way of concrete agreement, but rather to sustain and to advance the legitimacy of its government both globally and domestically. The jarring contrast between this goal and the manifest illegitimacy of the Chinese government was what prompted the Bush White House in 2006 -
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