A recently released Wikileaks cable provides a rare and detailed glimpse into the degree of stage managing involved when Mr. Hu makes domestic visits, usually with state-run new agencies in tow. The cable describes a great deal of secrecy over Mr. Hu's identity, keeping local officials in the dark until the president himself arrives, as well as measures that include keeping the temperature of home cooking oil low so he won't be scalded while helping locals prepare a meal.
Mr. Hu's domestic trips are regularly the top story on China's national evening news. His meetings with farmers, factory workers and schoolchildren, among others, harken to the party's populist roots and are a chance for the propaganda apparatus to soften Mr. Hu's often rigid outward persona.
The cable is based on an interview between embassy staff and a former ranking local party official, whose poverty-stricken district in the northwestern province of Gansu Mr. Hu visited during the Chinese New Year holiday in 2007.
Ten days before Mr. Hu's visit, an advance team from Beijing arrived to tell the local leader that a ranking party member would be visiting, though its members never revealed that Mr. Hu was the expected visitor. Then, three days before Mr. Hu would arrive, the advance team chose a farmhouse in one of the district's villages where Mr. Hu would share a traditional New Year's meal.
Officials finally chose the home of 70-year-old Li Cai, a longtime party member.
"The house appealed to the General Office advance team not only because it looked rustic…but Li himself sported a long beard that made him the epitome of a weathered Gansu farmer," the cable read.
With the location chosen, officials ordered that nothing be changed. Party officials fear local cadres would try to spruce up a house too much, and the local officials ordered Mr. Li not to shave his long beard.
The cable goes on to describe the meal itself:
Word came from the General Office that "the visitor" wanted to make meat dumplings with the family…even though it was not the local custom. Another part of the meal, a genuine local tradition of frying twisted dough sticks in a wok of boiling oil, presented the serious risk of hot oil splashing on Hu Jintao. The solution…was to heat the oil to 70 percent of the normal temperature and give Hu an extra long set of chopsticks. When it came time to eat, Hu's own undercooked portion was set aside in favor of properly fried dough sticks that had been prepared earlier.
Stage managing the trips of top political leaders isn't unique to the Chinese. There was no shortage of photo-ops during Vice President Joe Biden's recent trip to the country, for example. In one case, shortly after Mr. Biden finished a private tea in the city of Dujiangyan in the southwestern province of Sichuan with his Chinese counterpart, Vice President Xi Jinping, the two men chatted casually (at least as casually as the vice presidents of China and the U.S. are capable) on the city's idyllic South Bridge. More than 100 journalists, State Department and Foreign Ministry officials looked on, not to mention a small army of U.S. Secret Service.
So, what to do when a scripted moment goes astray? The cable describes a moment from Mr. Hu's 2007 visit to Gansu, when the young granddaughter of wispy-bearded Mr. Li refused the local potato variety Mr. Hu offered her. The child complained she was tired of eating them.
"The family eventually cajoled the girl into accepting," the cable read. A shot of Mr. Hu and the young girl together sharing the local specialty was later broadcast on the national evening news.
0 comments:
Post a Comment