Yawn. Opinions differed on whether Hu's climate speech yesterday was a sign that he was running circles around Obama, or just overhyped. For anyone hoping for China to assert itself as a global leader, this afternoon's address was a letdown.
Hu'sspeech was organized around platitudes like "we should prupse cooperation with a more open mind" and "we should be more tolerant to one another and live together in harmony."
When it did get down to pledging action, it was mostly about continuing to support the Millennium Development Goals and climate agreements that China is already signed on to.
Barack Obama's speech may not have been heavy on specifics. (These types of addresses rarely are), but there was at least a clear signal that he aimed to take the U.S. and the U.N. in a new direction. Obama also showed, as he often does, a willingness to acknowledge mistakes of the past and negative perceptions of U.S. action. From Hu's speech, you would never know that China's relations with the world had ever been anything but harmonious.
As Obama said, "speeches alone will not solve our problems," but to the degree that they signal the kind of role the speaker is looking to play in the multipolar world that nearly every speaker today has insisted we are entering, the American president looked a lot more like a leader.
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