Senator Hillary Clinton presented as evidence of her foreign policy experience a speech she gave in Beijing as First Lady during her husband’s administration. “I went to Beijing in 1995 and stood up to the Chinese government on human rights and women’s rights,” she said in her dispute with Barack Obama over presidential qualifications.

Here is Mrs. Clinton’s speech from 1995 (HT: Adam Minter). Its 2182 words mention Beijing once and China never, though the NYT credited her with speaking “more forcefully on human rights than any American dignitary has on Chinese soil.” That report also said this:

A senior Administration official traveling with Mrs. Clinton was at pains after the address to explain that it did not mark a return to a more vocal confrontation with China over its poor human rights record. In recent months, Washington has sought to tone down its public remarks on human rights abuses in favor of a more private dialogue that had few results.

“There is nothing in her speech that in any way deviates from our approach on China,” the official said, “or on our desire to get the relationship stabilized and to get some momentum going. This is a United Nations conference and she was speaking out on a global problem.”

So it is a bit unclear whether Mrs. Clinton “stood up to the Chinese government,” or was rather “speaking out on a global problem” instead. How inscrutable. Could be one thing, could be another. Perhaps another case where the ultimate resolution depends on determining “what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” as it were.

And another thing: maybe Norman Hsu or Bernard Schwartz or Yah Lin ‘Charlie’ Trie or Johnny Chung or others similarly situated can enlighten us as to the Clintons’ definitive “approach on China.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 3:41 am and is filed under China, Democrats, General, MSM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.