Washington has closed up shop and moved to Beijing. Or so it appears.
Check out who’s here at this moment. First off, former President George H.W. Bush can be seen in this photo meeting with President Hu Jintao yesterday. You can bet they aren’t talking about the Houston Astros.
On top of that, five Cabinet members – count ‘em, five – are now in Beijing. Treasury, Commerce, Labor, HHS and Energy are all here. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, is arriving. And there are a slew of sub-Cabinet level people here, like the Environmental Protection Administration chief and the Ex-Im Bank chief.
Some of them are here for the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.
Others are here for . . . hey, what the heck are they here for? Isn't there work back home in Washington?
I saw Bush elder here late last year for a Texas A&M University-sponsored event on energy. He comes regularly. The brief Xinhua story linked above said he was here this time “at the invitation of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.”
Bush Sr. may well be the Sino-U.S. “back channel” man. I doubt Hu would be giving him an audience every year because he is a “lao pengyou” – or old friend – of China, having served here as ambassador in the 1970s.
Well, hmmmm, today is 14 December ... soon will be Christmans, isn't it? and of course a few days after that is new year.
Do you by any chance notice their spouses, and perhaps a child or two are insight?
Posted by: cindy | December 14, 2006 at 09:08 AM