Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States last week may not have yielded major political outcomes, or even concrete progress, on many of the long-pending disputes over trade, Taiwan or human rights that the two countries have grappled with recently.
This did not, however, come in the way of China's official media projecting the visit as a major, and historic, political event — one that, analysts say, has boosted Mr. Hu's standing at home, even in the absence of noteworthy outcomes.
“Hu's U.S. visit shapes new political civilisation” read the lead editorial in the official Global Times newspaper on Friday. The Communist Party's official People's Daily led with a front page article headlined “To Open a New Chapter in the Sino-U.S. Cooperative Partnership.”
Analysts here have been struck by the tone and unprecedented intensity of the official media's coverage, which has dominated front pages of official newspapers and led news broadcasts for the past ten days.
Much of the coverage has been focused on one theme — increasing U.S. recognition of China's rise and a portrayal of both nations, and their leaders, as “equal partners”.
“The grand reception ceremony in honour of the Chinese President is viewed by the ‘face-loving' Chinese public as a symbol of a burgeoning Chinese national dignity, and buzzed by the Chinese media as a loud and clear message from Washington that U.S. and China are finally standing at the equal footing as ‘partners',” wrote one columnist in the People's Daily .
The newspaper even delayed its Thursday edition by almost half a day — a rare occurrence — just to include photographs and coverage of the U.S. President's state dinner for Mr. Hu from the previous night on its front page.
The media attention, analysts and diplomats here say, reflected the special emphasis placed on this visit by the Hu Jintao administration, with this likely to be the last visit to the U.S. by the Chinese leader before his term in office ends in 2012. Much of the coverage spoke of a historical legacy being left by Mr. Hu. Official newspapers that have often taken a hard line on the U.S., even accusing it in recent months of attempting to encircle China and restricting its rise, played down any differences.
The Global Times , an official tabloid known for its strident views, spoke of the visit shaping “a new political civilisation”. “[The U.S. and China's] coexistence has created a geo-political miracle,” the paper wrote in an editorial. “The next decades will tell whether the competition between China and the U.S. will truly change human history, or if differences will triumph.”
The one moment of the four-day trip that did not go according to script and generated many headlines overseas — when Mr. Hu was questioned by two U.S. reporters on human rights — did not find mention in the Chinese media.
