A Half Hour Later You're Hungry For Power Again

The Chief Oligarch of China, Hu Jintao (or Jintao Hu, if you prefer) has finished his Peking Duck (or Beijing Duck, if you prefer) at the White House and on Friday headed for Chicago to meet with America's Chief Oligarch, Richard Daley (or "That Jerk," if you prefer).

The Chinese leader is shown at a gathering at the Confucius Center located on the grounds of the Walter Payton School in Chicago (there will be no snarky references about Walter Payton, thank you very much). Daley and the Chinese leadership are old friends. Over the years, Daley has made four official trips to China since 2004, and has a well-documented fondness for the country. It comes from his visits to schools and official receptions where he was amazed to find that the Chinese students and guides spoke flawless English and knew American history forward and backward. That doesn't surprise me. What would surprise me is if Daley visited the public schools in Chicago and found anyone who could speak flawless English or knew anything about American history.

For Hu Jintao, one would think that San Francisco, with the largest Chinese community outside of China, would be the logical stop in his two-city visit. But he knows America, and in San Francisco only the non-Chinese population appreciates communist dictators. Most of the Chinese community is comprised of middle class workers, diligent students, and business people who don't like government telling them what to do. In fact, that's how most of the recent generation got here in the first place.

But Chicago was the perfect spot. Two ruthless leaders of political machines that brook no opposition. Of course, it is a lot safer to walk the streets of Beijing alone at night than it is to walk the streets of Chicago, but Hu Jintao wasn't exactly traveling alone and unarmed.

Although I would prefer that the students in Chicago learn to speak proper English first, it makes perfect sense to me that they would be learning Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese and that Daley would be so proud of that fact. The students at Walter Payton College Prep study math, science and language in a place utterly divorced from any of the other schools in Chicago which teach essentially nothing. Starting at a much more diverse arena, there are 12,000 students in Chicago vying to get into Payton Prep, and knowing Chinese is an integral part of the program. I assume that they learn a little about football too, but that's not part of this story.

Belaboring the obvious, Chicago Chinese businessman Tony Shu, president of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce said "It creates a whole generation of younger students and future leaders to understand Chinese culture and language. It will help the business transaction. If you know the language, you'll find it so much easier." Unnamed sources have reported to this blog that the first phrases the students learn in Chinese are: "May I borrow just a few more billion?" and "We love your products. Do they still contain high levels of lead?"

Hu congratulated Daley on his 22 years in office, calling him "the most senior mayor in America." Hu was also rumored to have inquired "how do you maintain such control without troops?" But that is unconfirmed. Daley is said to have returned the compliment by saying: "You have done a wonderful job as head commie, and haven't had a single published massacre on your watch."

In fact, the love-fest became so warm that the two leaders decided to conduct a small poll as to which was the more effective leader. They limited it to themselves, their chief of staffs, and a fifth tie-breaking neutral observer. Daley won 7 to 2. And he didn't even need tanks.