Comments on: 2 Week Hiatus

By: C. Custer

C. Custer — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:03:39 +0000

Good stuff! In other news, leading a group of high school kids around China is pretty damn tiring…

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:43:59 +0000

There’s also a video available, where one can observe the strong accent of the American ambassador: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/11/16/full-video-and-photos-presidents-town-hall-shanghai

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:01:18 +0000

BBC doesn’t seem too happy with the way the town hall was portrayed in the media in China:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8363669.stm

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:15:08 +0000

Here’s a link to the transcript:

http://www.examiner.com/x-15615-Asia-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m11d16-Full-transcript-of-Obamas-town-hall-meeting-with-Shanghai-students

James Fallows also makes a good point that at times, his inexperience speaking to non-native English speaking audiences showed through.

Overall, though, I thought he was bold in stressing things like human rights and internet freedom. I also thought it was clever the way he answered the question about cross-straits relations by saying that he hopes cross-straits relations improve and supports the one-China policy, but never mentioned which he thinks is the legitimate one-China. I think it was rather obvious that he just ignored the bit about weapon sales entirely, though.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:09:10 +0000

Apparently Xinhua carried a running transcript of the town hall meeting speech and questions, which included Obama’s remarks on internet freedom, and human rights in general, but it seems to have disappeared. You can still find a transcript on the White House website. Obviously politically sensitive aspects of the meeting aren’t going to resurface anywhere on the Chinese official media.
It was good that the ‘firewall’ came up, though I was surprised only Twitter was singled out for mention.