WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton's unstated but near-inevitable campaign for the 2016 presidency is ramping up with this week's release of "Hard Choices," her memoir of her time as secretary of state, and the (soon-to-be) countless corresponding press interviews. The book will hopefully help broaden the conversation from Benghazi -- the Libyan city where gunmen killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Sept. 2012 -- to a broader reckoning of her four-year tenure at the State Department, and from her past record to her future policies.
Clinton's complicated dance with China, for example, is a far more important guide to U.S. policy than what she did or did not know about embassy security in Libya. In her book, according to The Washington Post, Clinton describes three choices for managing Asia: "broadening the U.S. relationship with China, strengthening alliances with others in the region as a counterbalance to China, or elevating multilateral organizations in the region. 'I decided that the smart power choice was to meld all three approaches,' she writes." Foreign affairs specialist Walter Russell Mead describes her as "a realist who believes that the United States and China can reach a genuine accommodation based on economic interests and a common desire to avoid war."
What do the Chinese and their leaders think of Clinton? There are no credible polls demonstrating how China's 1.4 billion people perceive U.S. politicians -- or their own, for that matter. But a close read of Chinese media and Internet chatter, as well as dozens of interviews, reveal that the thought of President Hillary incites a surprising amount of anger among Chinese intellectuals, average citizens and -- judging from the way state media covers her -- possibly China's leaders as well.
As part of a special package after Clinton left the State Department, entitled "The Departure of an 'Adversary,' " the nationalist newspaper the Global Times summarized her tenure, writing that "in just four years in office, Hillary has quickly become, in the eyes of Chinese netizens, the most hated U.S. political figure." While discussion of Clinton on the Chinese Internet also features anodyne debates about U.S. politics and admiration of her success, it generally ranges from musings on why she "hates" China to ad hominem attacks rallying against the idea of a Hillary Clinton administration.
"She can't even manage her husband, and yet she wants to manage a country?" asked one user of Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, in a representative comment.
Much of the negative opinion against Hillary in China seems to come from the state media's portrayal of her over the last decade, both during her time in office and afterwards, as a tough, sharp, unfriendly "iron lady." State media pores over her personal life, printing thinly sourced speculations about her sexual orientation and obsessing over her fashion choices. While even respected U.S. publications run stories on Clinton's hairstyle, the superficial details occupy a far larger percentage of Chinese coverage. A slideshow by People's Daily Online, the website of the party's official mouthpiece, consists of photos showing Hillary's hairstyles from different periods, such as "the most country-bumpkin" look and "the most over-the-top" look. "We don't have a lot of channels to learn about American politicians," admitted a deputy director of the Department of Online Forums at People's Daily Online, who asked to remain anonymous. "Only the gossip makes it into Chinese newspapers."
Antipathy from Chinese political pundits, however, seems to be inspired by a deep dislike of Clinton's policies, especially the so-called pivot to Asia -- a strategy Clinton rolled out in Foreign Policy in October 2011 while she was secretary of state.
More specifically, Chinese foreign policy analysts feel she spent far too much time criticizing China -- the second of her three approaches mentioned above -- and not enough time accommodating China.
Clinton's tenure overlapped with an increase in tensions among China and its neighbors -- especially regarding disputed territories in the East China Sea and the South China Sea. It also overlapped with Beijing's growing assertiveness, after the country's economy emerged largely unscathed from the Great Recession. Much Chinese anger seems to come from Hillary publicly standing up to China -- something she pointedly did in press interviews and on most of the seven trips she took there as secretary of state. (At least she's consistent: Clinton even did so in a famous 1995 trip to China as first lady, when she took Beijing to task for limiting discussion of women's issues.)
Obviously, Clinton is not the only prominent U.S. politician to be criticized by Chinese media.
George W. Bush, for example, has often been ridiculed for supposedly "having the second-lowest IQ among American presidents" (behind Warren G. Harding). But the way in which Chinese media depicts Clinton seems to demonstrate a profound discomfort with her among top party officials, perhaps because she is a woman.
"There is a tremendous amount of sexism involved. I think Hillary is terrifying to them," said Kelley Currie, a senior fellow at Project 2049 Institute who has worked extensively with the Chinese government on human rights issues. "They're a bunch of old men who dye their hair and wear shoe lifts and are used to women serving them tea. She is not something they are used to dealing with in their political system. And she's not going to pull her punches with them, in the way that even the most senior women they deal with do." (There have been no women in the Politburo Standing Committee, the top Party leadership body, since the Mao era.)
More generally, Chinese invariably attach masculine or nefarious attributes to the Chinese women who have achieved power, writes Paul French, an author and historian of 20th-century China. Former Vice Premier Wu Yi -- a tough negotiator -- was often called "Iron Lady." Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing, the highest-ranking woman in Chinese Communist Party history, who was sentenced to life imprisonment not long after the death of Mao, was called a "white-boned demon" who seduced Mao and led him astray. "Women, so the thinking goes, can only be successful through their sexuality, or through their manliness," writes French.
Yet ordinary Chinese appear to feel more sympathetic toward Clinton than political pundits and government officials in Beijing. Hillary is "capable, domineering and rational," said Mr. Li, a 41-year-old university teacher in the eastern Chinese city of Jinan, who asked to go by just his surname. Her problem, he added, "is that she doesn't have a good image in China."
According to many of the people interviewed for this article, Vice President Joe Biden would be a better choice for Democratic candidate. Unlike Clinton, Biden "doesn't seem to see his job as carrying out the God-given mission of the United States and bringing China to its knees," said Han Deqiang, an aeronautics professor and the founder of the well-known leftist website Utopia. Biden, in both the United States and China, has an uncommon touch for connecting with people. During an Aug. 2011 trip there, Biden ate at a local Beijing restaurant that specializes in pig intestine stew. "His choice to dine local makes him seem much closer to the Chinese people," said Du. "Many Chinese are left with the impression that Hillary Clinton is a bit aggressive, whereas Joe Biden appears much more moderate and restrained," said Chen Chenchen, an opinion editor for the English edition of the Global Times.
Chinese views of Clinton won't sway American voters, of course. In fact, China's negative perception of her might actually be an asset in a presidential run, if she decides to take that step. And if she does win, one imagines she'll work out a way of "broadening the U.S. relationship with China," as Clinton wrote in her book. That seems more likely than Beijing learning how to deal with Hillary.
With research by Liz Carter.
Stone Fish is an associate editor at Foreign Policy and formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek. Gao, a frequent contributor to FP's Tea Leaf Nation, is based in Beijing.
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