President Obama’s visit to China has ended. As I reviewed the coverage of his visit I was looking to see how he would balance the traditional U.S. concern for human rights with trade and security concerns. Would he, as past presidents have done, sternly lecture the Chinese on human rights, or would he (as Secretary Clinton suggested) make it clear that human rights issues would not get in the way of more strategic concerns? It seems that he borrowed a tool from his campaign to strike a balance between the two, staging a town hall-style meeting with students in Shanghai and used the event to promote the values of free speech and free access to information. This report from CNN contrasts the feel and style of Obama’s town hall meetings in the U.S. with this one in China. Apparently the students were preselected to attend and their questions carefully vetted, but one question about the use of the Twitter service provided Obama an opportunity to discuss access to the internet and the politically touchy subject of internet censorship. China, as you know, as developed quite a reputation for heavy-handed internet censorship (just Google “firewall China“) in the name of fighting what they see as social ills (dissent) and preserving national harmony. His reply, which was respectful of both his hosts and American values, provided what to me was one of the highlights of the trip. If you are interested, here is the full video of the town hall:
