Washington, January 20: Chinese President Hu Jintao declared Wednesday that “a lot still needs to be done” to improve his country’s record on human rights, a rare concession that came after President Barack Obama asserted that such rights are “core views” among Americans.
The exchange over human rights was balanced by US delight over newly announced Chinese business deals expected to generate about $45 billion in new export sales for the US.
Those agreements were cemented during Wednesday’s summit meeting between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies. Obama said the deals would help create 235,000 US jobs.
“I absolutely believe China’s peaceful rise is good for the world, and it is good for America,” Obama said, addressing a major concern in Beijing that the United States wants to see China’s growth constrained.
“We just want to make sure that (its) rise occurs in a way that reinforces international norms, international rules, and enhances security and peace as opposed to it being a source of conflict either in the region or around the world,” Obama said.
The two leaders, standing side by side at a joint news conference in the White House, vowed closer cooperation on critical issues ranging from increasing trade to fighting terrorism. But they also stood fast on differences, especially over human rights.
Obama noted that China’s human rights policies were a source of tension between the two governments.
The US has called for expanded religious freedoms and for China to release jailed dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who was prevented from attending the Dec. 10 prize ceremony in the Norwegian capital.
“We have some core views as Americans about the universality of certain rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly,” Obama said.
He said he drove that home forcefully in his discussions with the Chinese leader, but “that doesn’t prevent us from cooperating in these other critical areas.”
Hu at first didn’t respond to an American reporter’s question on human rights differences between the two countries. Pressed about it in a later question, he said technical difficulties in translation had prevented him from hearing the question. He argued that human rights should be viewed in the context of different national circumstances.
–Agencies