CCTV FOLLIES 12.14 SEEING RED
Xi's visit to Vietnam is a red banner event -Shared Confucian values! -Ecstatic applause, warm welcome! -Hugs, hierarchy and holding hands -South of the border style soft touch -Japan in scandal
With a precious and precocious personality cult to maintain, CCTV keeps the focus of its full-spectrum coverage on the wise and sagacious Xi, widely hailed and applauded everywhere, especially in Vietnam on this day. His every phrase a fortune cookie nugget of wisdom, a VIP guest so stratospheric in importance it sometimes seems like he’s hosting himself.
But Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s paramount leader, did not get to be paramount leader of his country without a few good moves of his own and he is not easily ruffled.
He rises to the occasion of recognizing China’s rise in the world.
Indeed his relaxed, almost soporific reception of Xi’s very long speech tells it all. Go ahead, talk, do your thing, strut your stuff. We understand. We are good hosts, we are fellow Confucians and fellow communists, we will extend every standard courtesy, just don’t expect us to sit up straight on the edge of our seats with respect.
Xi’s alpha man moves are obvious and necessary fodder to his cult, but Vietnam takes him in stride, as it did President Biden a few months before.
Ants don’t lose face by stepping out of the way of elephants, and Vietnam’s reception of the pugnacious and egotistical Xi is a master class in side-stepping an elephant. Let the big bully China from up north think they are getting the respect they think they deserve, while Vietnam quietly maintains its pride and coyly reserves a slightly more nuanced view of the asymmetrical power balance.
Perhaps the most successful show of humility as hidden power comes when the paramount leader of Vietnam, ten years Xi’s senior, holds on to his hand like a child needing reassurance. It’s endearing, and entirely unthreatening, yet it forces Xi to change his usual stiff, poker-faced self presentation and break into a smile.
Perhaps it touches on daddy issues for him, in some subtle way.
Nguyen Phu Trong’s hand-holding and all-embracing hugs cut Xi down to size, making him more human and less awe-inspiring.
They held hands frequently and with apparent affection.
Foreign minister Wang Yi looks like he really needs a hug but, alas, he didn’t get one.
Even Cai Qi’s ignoring him.
Vietnam’s centuries-old flexible approach to China’s celestial leadership can be seen in the grand welcome ceremonies which fill a needy spot in the Chinese national ego.
What’s more, Vietnam’s pomp and circumstance largely springs from a shared tradition of imperial Chinese court protocol, so it’s immediately recognizable, with the addition of a red accent, bearing the echoes of fraternal communism.
The similarities are striking, but in Vietnam the state protocol has been pared down. The deployment of public space and the choreography are more human in scale, in keeping with Hanoi’s practical realities and philosophical outlook.
Also in keeping with shared Confucian norms, the men do the leading and the heavy-lifting politically, but the ladies, pillars of the family, get their due respect, attending art events and cultural activities appropriate to the second sex.
Peng Liyuan gives a boyish thumb’s up to young Vietnamese trying to master the Chinese language. “It’s a bridge between our cultures…”
But how do the top two men talk without speaking one another’s language?
Xi, with a straight face, tells Vietnamese PM Phạm Minh about China’s peaceful intentions in the South China Sea which is acknowledged with a cryptic smile.
A media-savvy communist political theorist who did a stint of study in the Soviet Union, paramount leader Nguyen Phu Trong is a tough nut and no pushover, but he offers a softer, gentler vision of how a communist leader can present himself. His calm, laid-back, self-deprecating style makes it possible for him to get along grandly with egotistical Americans and egotistical Chinese alike.
There was ample clapping and extended applause for the visiting Xi who is not only no stranger to getting showered with applause back home but seems to need it.
Vietnam’s diplomatic magic worked wonders with the state media:
“Xi's visit to Vietnam shows China's great importance to Vietnam-China relations and will inject strong impetus into the further development of bilateral relations…”
Xinhua quickly amplified the significance of Vietnam’s red carpet welcome:
“The Vietnamese side attached great importance to this visit and extended a warm reception of the highest level and unprecedented courtesy, Wang Yi said, noting that Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Chairman of the National Assembly of Vietnam Vuong Dinh Hue went to the airport to welcome and see off the Chinese delegation respectively.”
In other good news, the Chinese economy is robust, as can be seen in the up, up and up of shipments of goods and shipbuilding.
The foreign news section opens with a twist. We’re back in Vietnam where the Vietnamese people sing praise of Xi Jinping’s successful visit and bilateral ties.
The lakes of Hanoi…
