Thus far, the global confab appears more like a contest as to who can insult and humiliate Obama more.
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The first incident occurred when a Chinese official demanded that a group of reporters traveling with Obama be ushered away from Air Force One, according to pool reports.
The decision deprived the president of the grand display of descending the stairs from the main doorway to a red carpet.
In a scene at the airport that was captured on video, a White House press aide told a Chinese official who wanted the media to leave that US journalists would stay on the tarmac to see the USA president – and that they were standing under the wing of a US plane. In addition, a Chinese official tried to block National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes when they tried to move from the press area on the tarmac over to President Obama.
When Obama did find his way on to a red carpet on the tarmac below, there were heated altercations between the USA and Chinese officials, with one Chinese official caught on video shouting: “This is our country!”
On Weibo, the equivalent of Twitter, the Public Security Bureau declared: “This is our country”.
“It may help to reassure countries about tangible steps China is taking”, he said. The comments on such sites appear only after passing censors.
Also Sunday, the head of the European Union’s governing body called for action on China’s bloated steel industry.
The tensions continued throughout the trip as Chinese officials severely restricted the media’s ability to attend Obama’s G20 events.
“We certainly have much to do – both in the political and economic spheres”, he added.
“China provides a rolling staircase for every arriving state leader, but the U.S. side complained that the driver doesn’t speak English and can’t understand security instructions from the USA; so China proposed that we could assign a translator to sit beside the driver, but the USA side turned down the proposal and insisted that they didn’t need the staircase provided by the airport”, the official added. It’s being seen as a “provocation” aimed at Mr. Obama. Duterte scoffed in a speech Monday. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. Do not just throw questions. “Son of a b****, I will swear at you”.
But at a news conference wrapping up the event, he was due to face a barrage of questions on the various diplomatic flashpoints that arose during his final G20 summit, including efforts to broker a ceasefire in Syria and longstanding disputes with China and Russian Federation.
“Who is he (Obama) to confront me?” The package would include provisions so aid can reach besieged areas of Syria and measures to prevent Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government from bombing areas where US -backed rebels are operating.
Unlike with China, we actually had a friendly relationship with the Philippines a few years ago.
Barack Obama just wrapped up what is expected to be his last visit to China as United States president with the G20 summit, an annual forum for world leaders held in Hangzhou, China.
Obama called Turkey a key ally in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State and said “we now need to finish the job” of securing Turkey’s border with Syria.
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North Korea added to the drama on Monday with the firing of three ballistic missiles off its east coast.
