Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. President Barack Obama (Xinhua Photo)

Les Payne

November 14, 2009

When the two “most powerful people in the world” sit down in Beijing Sunday they will not likely elaborate on the coincidence that neither of the leaders of the two reigning economic superpowers on earth is a white male.

President Obama and China’s Hu Jintao have been ranked one-two on the power scale by Forbes magazine after surveying the other 6.2 billion humans on the planet. After disqualifying the rest of us, Forbes settled on Obama and Hu based on; their influence over other people; control of large financial resources; and their active use of power in multiple spheres.

Much has been made of Obama’s historic ascendancy, and the experts predict that the on-rushing China juggernaut threatens to overtake the U.S. as the economic superpower—thanks chiefly to the ladling away of U.S. jobs and capital by presidents running from Reagan to George W. Bush; all these leaders happened to have been white.

Were it left  solely  to the majority of  their ethnic group last year, a President John McCain  would have continued driving the republic down the rabbit hole. And, if someone had dared put a pistol to McCain's head, this former POW whose behavior was modified by his North Vietnamese captors would likely reap vengeance from the Asians at his sit-down with President Hu. Instead, Obama will register another historic moment  in China, one likely to slip  past the  near-sighted media.     

The moment has not, however, escaped the clever Chinese. The government of President Hu Jintao bluntly probed for a possible, though unlikely, soft spot of the first black Chief Executive of the U.S.. In warning the president off a tentative meeting with the Dalai Lama, a Chinese government spokesman recalled Obama’s admiration for Abraham Lincoln who fought against the succession of the South and its entrenched 19th Century

slave policy.

The Tibetan leader, according to Qin Gang, of the Foreign Ministry, is the equivalent of the secessionist, slave South in his push for an autonomy that would divide China.

"Lincoln played an incomparable role in protecting the national unity and territorial integrity of the United States," said Qin. "[Obama] is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln's major significance for that movement," he continued, equating Lincoln’s position to China’s stance against the Dalai Lama.

Comparison to Lincoln under the circumstances and at a distance of 7,000 miles may not be altogether encouraging for President Obama’s plans to talk global warming, economic issues, and yes, to inform President Hu of his intentions one day to meet with the dreaded Dalai Lama.

Your move, Mr. President.