Just prior to the November 15 Obama visit to China, a front-page article in the New York Times began with the following sobering assessment: “When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.”

Thus we see acknowledgement of the fact that China holds more U.S. debt than any other country and, consequently, has the power to pull the plug on the American dollar. That’s not a good position for any American president to find himself. President Obama went to Beijing, therefore, not to tell the Chinese what’s expected of them, but merely to reassure them that their investment in America remains sound. As the saying goes, he went with his hat in his hand. 

If he wanted to do so, Obama could have visited the T-shirt store where the hottest item being offered is a shirt depicting him wearing a Mao Zedong hat. Over 200 shirts have been sold, said the joyful proprietor. He further explained that the smiling image of the U.S. president has him wearing the hat “sideways,” not the way the late Chinese dictator always wore his. Why the slightly different placement of the green hat?  “Because it’s like the way all Americans wear their hats,” grinned the hat seller. 

Reuters reported that customers at this establishment can also purchase handbags portraying the same tilted-hat image of Obama. Next, said the happy merchant, there will be boxer shorts adorned with the president’s likeness. No doubt, there will soon be coffee mugs and other paraphernalia, all of which suggests an eerie parallel between Mao and Barack. Young Chinese have been given little information about their deceased leader’s deeds; they don’t know that he was the worst murderer the world has ever known. 

The gleeful peddler claims to have sent one of his hot-selling T-shirts to the White House. To date, he told the reporter, he has received no response. Perhaps the handbag would earn him a letter on White House stationery. 

In days gone by, it would have been unthinkable for anyone to poke such a jest at a U.S. president. Or, if something like that had been tried, there would have been a prompt official protest. Not so in this case however. When you’re a borrower with your hat in your hand, whether a Mao hat or any hat, you have to endure such an insult.      

Photo: AP Images

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Bonnie said:

	... You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Especially true when the people become wise to your game.
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November 18, 2009
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Lee Gonzales said:

We don't owe the Chinese Red communist government one thin dime We owe the people of China a huge debt due to the fact that our State Department betrayed the people intto Mao's murdering hands.http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/history/world/1464 Dan Smoot suggested that we pay off the Reds with printing press dollars in his book "People Along The Way." But keep the inflated dollars from finding their way into the USA!

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November 18, 2009
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Thomas Paine said:

	China gets what they deserve The reason we are such a large debtor nation is because we outsourced all of our jobs and wealth to China. So if they don't like our printing press dollars, fine, we will merely not buy any more products from China and start making them here again. Sorry China you have no leverage.
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November 18, 2009
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Bonnie said:

	... The Federal Reserve buys Treasury Notes and pays for them with dollars. I suggest that when China wants to get rid of those dollars, the Fed take the dollars back and give the Chinese the Treasury Notes. The Chinese can always trade these notes back for dollars whenever they want (unless we eliminate the Fed first).
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November 18, 2009
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Someone who actually lives in Beijing said:

... Check the news, the Beijing municipal government cracked down on the shirts last week in advance of the Obama visit and the "gleeful seller," whom I actually personally know and is NOTHING like you reported here, was forced to hand over his entire stock to the police. So, from your perspective, it seems to be a good thing that the Chinese government continues to suppress free expression lest such freedom prove "insulting" to thin-skinned foreigners who can't take a joke. (BTW: I am a thin-skinned American, living in Beijing, but I think Obama had way more to worry about on his China trip -- Taiwan, T-Bills, Trade, Tibet -- than a t-shirt or a purse.)

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November 18, 2009
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Flu-Bird said:

	Phooie on obama Why should we pay any respect to OBAMA despite being our dictator and despite that undeserved PEACE PRIZE All i can say about him is PHOOIE
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November 19, 2009
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Donnie said:

	... you guys know nothing about China
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November 29, 2009
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