Trung Quốc đầu tư rất nhiều cho Hội nghị thượng đỉnh G-20 lần đầu tiên tổ chức tại nước họ. Hàng Châu như được lột xác trước thềm G-20. Khoảng 225 nhà máy bị yêu cầu đóng cửa; ½ phương tiện giao thông bị cấm sử dụng từ ngày 28-8; lực lượng an ninh dày đặc với đội ngũ nữ an ninh đẹp như minh tinh màn bạc; thành phố được trang trí lộng lẫy, nhiều ngôi nhà được “nhà nước” đến lắp bồn cầu miễn phí để cư dân không ra ngoài “đi bậy”. Đây là lần đầu tiên sau nhiều thập niên mà một số ngôi nhà Hàng Châu mới cảm nhận được “ý nghĩa thực tiễn” của bồn cầu gia đình.
Các thành phố gần đó như Hoàng Sơn và An Khánh thuộc An Huy, Nghĩa Ô thuộc Chiết Giang và thậm chí Thượng Hải cũng bị yêu cầu đóng cửa nhà máy để môi trường trong sạch. Hàng ngàn cư dân tại các chung cư cao cấp gần trung tâm hội nghị buộc phải “đi du lịch” khỏi thành phố và căn hộ họ bị niêm phong vì sợ “khủng bố” có thể đột nhập vào để bắn tỉa từ các ô cửa. Hai tuần trước ngày khai mạc, tất cả các loại dao tại khu vực dụng cụ nhà bếp trong siêu thị Metro Trung tâm bị yêu cầu dọn sạch! 10 thợ nấu ăn người Duy Ngô Nhĩ tại một nhà hàng nổi tiếng cũng được cho nghỉ việc sớm từ tháng 6. Mọi khách sạn ở Hàng Châu được yêu cầu phải báo cảnh sát khi có bất kỳ người Duy Ngô Nhĩ nào đăng ký thuê phòng. Cũng từ tháng 6, cảnh sát đã yêu cầu khu Thất Bảo, cách trung tâm thành phố khoảng 30 km, phải đóng cửa tất cả cửa hàng tạp hóa, quần áo và quán ăn lề đường. Tờ The Guardian thuật thêm: tại một khu phố gần trung tâm hội nghị, một băng rôn to ghi: “Hãy đóng góp cho Hội nghị bằng cách diệt sạch “bốn thành phần” ruồi, muỗi, gián và chuột”.
Theo thông tín viên Đông Bắc Á Yaqiu Wang thuộc CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists), nhiều nhân vật bất đồng chính kiến tại Hàng Châu cũng như các tỉnh lân cận đã bị giam lỏng vài tháng qua. Tất cả cơ quan truyền thông đều được lệnh kiểm soát chặt chẽ thông tin và phải có biện pháp xử lý tức thì khi có bất kỳ tin xấu nào liên quan công tác tổ chức G-20 lọt lên các trang mạng xã hội. Nói như Zhu Jiejin, giáo sư trợ giảng khoa quan hệ quốc tế Đại học Phục Đán, thì: “Việc tổ chức G-20 mang lại một cơ hội quan trọng để Trung Quốc trở thành người tạo luật chơi hơn là người chấp nhận luật chơi… Nó giúp khẳng định rằng chúng ta ngang bằng với các nước đã phát triển”.
Cách thức Bắc Kinh tổ chức G-20 đã làm lộ lên tất cả khiếm khuyết của mô hình phát triển Trung Quốc. Nó cho thấy một xã hội ô nhiễm cực kỳ nghiêm trọng, một nền chính trị chưa bao giờ mua được lòng người và một nền kinh tế chụp giật bất an. Hơn hết, nó cũng làm lộ lên mặt thật của văn hóa ngoại giao Trung Quốc. Việc không đưa xe thang đến chuyên cơ Air Force One đón Tổng thống Barack Obama, chắc chắn nhằm làm nhục tổng thống Mỹ, đã cho thế giới có thêm một bằng chứng nữa về “bản chất khó dời” của Trung Quốc: nhỏ nhen và ti tiện. Bắc Kinh luôn muốn chứng tỏ là “người lớn” nhưng họ chưa bao giờ trưởng thành. Họ thèm khát văn minh nhưng nền văn hóa cộng sản của họ chưa bao giờ chạm tay đến được mép rìa của thế giới hiện đại. Họ khao khát được công nhận như một “cường quốc” nhưng sự giới hạn văn hóa chỉ dẫn họ đến được một bên bờ của con sông văn minh mà có lẽ trong thâm tâm họ ao ước được tắm gội trong đó dù chỉ một lần.
Barack Obama 'deliberately snubbed' by Chinese in chaotic arrival at G20
The US president was denied the usual red carpet welcome and forced to ‘go out of the ass’ of Air Force One, observers say
Sunday 4 September 2016 03.27 EDT
Last modified on Sunday 4 September 201610.14 EDT
China’s leaders have been accused of delivering a calculated diplomatic snub to Barack Obama after the US president was not provided with a staircase to leave his plane during his chaotic arrival in Hangzhou before the start of the G20.
Chinese authorities have rolled out the red carpet for leaders including India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, and the British prime minister, Theresa May, who touched down on Sunday morning.
But the leader of the world’s largest economy, who is on his final tour of Asia, was forced to disembark from Air Force One through a little-used exit in the plane’s belly after no rolling staircase was provided when he landed in the eastern Chinese city on Saturday afternoon.
When Obama did find his way on to a red carpet on the tarmac below there were heated altercations between US and Chinese officials, with one Chinese official caught on video shouting: “This is our country! This is our airport!”
“The reception that President Obama and his staff got when they arrived here Saturday afternoon was bruising, even by Chinese standards,” the New York Times reported.
Jorge Guajardo, Mexico’s former ambassador to China, said he was convinced Obama’s treatment was part of a calculated snub.
“These things do not happen by mistake. Not with the Chinese,” Guajardo, who hosted presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón during his time in Beijing, told the Guardian.
“I’ve dealt with the Chinese for six years. I’ve done these visits. I took Xi Jinping to Mexico. I received two Mexican presidents in China. I know exactly how these things get worked out. It’s down to the last detail in everything. It’s not a mistake. It’s not.”
Guajardo added: “It’s a snub. It’s a way of saying: ‘You know, you’re not that special to us.’ It’s part of the new Chinese arrogance. It’s part of stirring up Chinese nationalism. It’s part of saying: ‘China stands up to the superpower.’ It’s part of saying: ‘And by the way, you’re just someone else to us.’ It works very well with the local audience.
“Why [did it happen]?” the former diplomat, who was ambassador from 2007 until 2013, added. “I guess it is part of Xi Jinping playing the nationalist card. That’s my guess.”
Bill Bishop, a China expert whose Sinocism newsletter tracks the country’s political scene, agreed that Obama’s welcome looked suspiciously like a deliberate slight intended “to make the Americans look diminished and weak”.
“It sure looks like a straight-up snub,” Bishop said. “This clearly plays very much into the [idea]: ‘Look, we can make the American president go out of the ass of the plane.’”
Obama exits Air Force One from the usual top door on Midway Atoll two days before his arrival in China. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
Bishop added: “We’ve no proof. It could clearly just be a cock-up but it would be a stunningly large cock-up given how well these people plan for all these events and especially for something like the G20. The idea that they have been preparing for well over a year for the G20 but suddenly there be a malfunction with the ramp just for one president … that really strains credulity.”
A Chinese foreign ministry official involved in the visit denied it had been a snub, telling the South China Morning Post the US delegation had declined to use the usual rolling red-carpet staircase.
“It would do China no good in treating Obama rudely,” the official, who declined to be named, was quoted as saying.
“China provides a rolling staircase for every arriving state leader, but the US side complained that the driver doesn’t speak English and can’t understand security instructions from the United States; so China proposed that we could assign a translator to sit beside the driver, but the US side turned down the proposal and insisted that they didn’t need the staircase provided by the airport,” the official added.
The US president offered a diplomatic reply when asked to comment on the airport “kerfuffle” on Sunday during a joint press conference with Theresa May.
“I wouldn’t over-crank the significance of it because, as I said, this is not the first time that these things happen and it doesn’t just happen here. It happens in a lot of places including, by the way, sometimes our allies,” Obama said, adding that “none of this detracts from the broader scope of the relationship”.
Obama suggested his Chinese hosts might have found the size of the US delegation “a little overwhelming”.
“We’ve got a lot of planes, a lot of helicopters, a lot of cars and a lot of guys. If you are a host country, sometimes it may feel a little bit much.”
Susan Rice, the US national security adviser, admitted she had been surprised by the handling of the president’s arrival. “They did things that weren’t anticipated,”she told reporters.
British prime minister Theresa May and chancellor Philip Hammond are given the full red carpet treatment on arrival in Hangzhou on Sunday. Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Images
The New York Times said Rice had appeared “baffled and annoyed” that the president had been forced to leave Air Force One through a door normally reserved for high-security trips to places such as Afghanistan.
In the lead-up to the final meeting between Obama and Xi, experts had predicted the pair would seek to part ways on a positive note with the announcement that the world’s two largest polluters would ratify the Paris climate agreement.
However, Obama’s unconventional welcome – and a series of subsequent skirmishes and quarrels between Chinese and US officials and journalists – were a reminder of the underlying tensions.
The Washington Post said Obama’s bumpy landing in China was “a fitting reflection of how the relationship between these two world powers has become frayed and fraught with frustration”.
“I think this time … maybe the seams were showing a little more than usual in terms of some of the negotiations and jostling that takes place behind the scenes,” Obama admitted on Sunday.
Official statements issued by both sides on Saturday, as the pair held more than four hours of bilateral meetings, hinted at some of the disagreements between the world’s two largest economies.
According to a White House statement, Obama told Xi of “America’s unwavering support for upholding human rights”.
“China opposes any other country interfering in its internal affairs in the name of human rights issues,” Xi told Obama in response, according to Xinhua, Beijing’s official news wire.
In an interview with CNN, Obama warned Beijing against muscle-flexing in the South China Sea. Xi told Obama his country would “unswervingly safeguard” its claims in the region.
Bishop said: “Other than in climate, in most areas of the US-China relationship there is increasing amounts of friction and some actually increasingly quite hot friction around the South China Sea and some of these military [interactions] in the region.”
“The US is looking a little weak and a little tired and I think [Beijing is] happy to put anybody in their place when they can. I think they see the opportunity to make Obama look weak,” he added.
Both Bishop and Guajardo said thereported confrontations between Chinese and US officials and journalists following Obama’s arrival in Hangzhou were par for the course in China. “That is just typical China. I remember when my president came, one of the Mexican press corps came out of it with stitches,” Guajardo recalled.
But Obama’s unceremonious arrival was unusual and surely deliberate, the former Mexican ambassador added. “Just as the Chinese are about giving face they are also about not giving it and letting you know that they are not giving it to you … They don’t overlook these things by mistake. It’s not who they are. It’s not the way they do these things,” he said.
Dirty game of China's Xi Jinping to welcome US President Barack Obama:
No Air-staircase, no Red Carpet..
President Obama used the belly airstair of the Air Force One
Red Carpet for Theresa May, PM of UK
Red Carpet for Mexican President
Red Carpet and honoring ceremony for Indian Prime Minister
Red Carpet for UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon
Red Carpet for French President
Red Carpet for Canadian PM
