Pope, John Boehner and Xi Jinping: who's more important for Americans?
With the American media distracted by other events, Xi Jinping gets a lesson in US politics
How important to the US is President Xi Jinping's first state visit to America? The answer could be mixed. For the US government, Xi is of course a very important visitor. But most Americans may consider Xi just another foreign leader visiting the United States.
On Friday morning, just as US President Barack Obama was welcoming Xi to Washington, US House Speaker John Boehner announced his resignation from Congress.
Major American broadcasters that were expected to broadcast live a joint press conference by Xi and Obama at the White House switched to airing Boehner's resignation speech simply because that's what most American people would want to know about.
Does that mean Xi was not important enough to get onto the front pages of top US newspapers and occupy prime hours on American TV networks? Not really. It's more because of the very basic political nature of American society, which to a very large extent is still US-centric. That may also explain why American media had to focus more on Boehner than the top leader of the world's No2 economy.
The timing of Boehner's resignation is interesting. His position, in some respects, is like the chairman of the National People's Congress, China's top legislative body. But the NPC is not as powerful as the US Congress and the chairmanship of the NPC is usually the last job for a senior Chinese politician ahead of retirement.
Boehner's resignation did mean a lot for the landscape of US politics, which could bring some new hopes or pressures on the Obama administration, but the appointment or change of an NPC chairman would not affect the operation of the Chinese government.
I'm not sure if Xi was also surprised by Boehner's resignation, especially when American journalists at the joint press conference asked Obama for comments on Boehner's resignation first, before seeking comments on US-China relations. But it would have given Xi a stark reminder of how different the political systems are in China and America.
In China, domestic media tried to make Xi's state visit the world's biggest event of the week, with all kinds of compliments. In the US and many other parts of the world, besides Boehner's resignation, Pope Francis's visit to America dominated media agenda, eclipsing Xi's visit in terms of news coverage.
Beijing shouldn't underestimate or overestimate the importance of the fast-growing nation. Beijing should be proud of its economic achievements of the past decade but it should remain humble and be more realistic about its role and image on the world stage.
Obama has a lot of problems on his side. So does Xi. Hopefully we can have fewer one-sided stories about America and China.
