米歇爾來華不談政治

When Michelle Obama declined to attend a crucial "shirtsleeves" summit between her husband and the newly promoted president of China last June, it was widely seen in Beijing as a stinging political snub.

The meeting was to be an unprecedented pairing of first ladies; Xi Jinping's wife, an elegant People's Liberation Army singer, has enough star power inside China to match her American counterpart.

Nearly nine months later, however, the Chinese public will this week finally get the chance to see the two women together when Mrs Obama takes her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, on a six-day half-term break to China that will be part family getaway, part international soft-power diplomacy.

In her role as first lady, Mrs Obama has always confined herself to ultra-safe areas like winning jobs forveterans, promoting education and espousing healthy eating for children, but she finds herself walking a political tightrope by visiting China.

The trip, which opens in Beijing on Wednesday will include that belated meeting with Mrs Peng, several official visits to schools and universities to highlight the value of US-China educational exchanges, as well as sightseeing trips to the northern city of Xi'an to see the famed terracotta warriors, and to the southern city of Chengdu for an obligatory encounter with a giant panda.

Malia, 13, and Sasha, 9, have been largely screened from public view since their father won the White House, but they will be under the spotlight.

Sasha is known to have studied Mandarin at school, famously testing out her skills as a nine-year-old on the former Chinese President Hu Jintao at a 2011 state dinner, whom she greeted with a 'Ni hao'. China will very likely want to hear if her skills have improved.

However the trip is already raising questions at home over whether Mrs Obama can really carry her assiduously non-political style into an arena as politically charged as US-China relations.

Categorised as an "official visit" on the White House website, Mrs Obama's East Wing staff are at pains to present it as a trip just like any other she has undertaken to Mexico, India or South Africa, inviting schoolchildren across America to email questions which Mrs Obama will answer in a daily blog.

"During my trip, I'll be visiting a university and two high schools in Beijing and Chengdu (which are two of China's largest cities)," she wrote, "I'll be talking with students about their lives in China and telling them about America and the values and traditions we hold dear."

Mrs Obama's decision to try and look past the difficult politics has drawn some unflattering comparisons with her two most recent predecessors, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton, who both used their positions to raise the profile of universal rights.

Mrs Obama's trip takes place against the backdrop of a difficult nine months in US-China relations in which many of the hopes expressed at the California summit at Sunnylands – billed as a chance to reset relations with a new Chinese president – proved overstated.

Internationally, things have also been strained since California. It has been noted that Mr Obama will not be stopping in Beijing on his own Asia trip next month, when he will instead visit Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Those are all nations that are warily eyeing China under Mr Xi which has become newly assertive in its lingering territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, to the point that Washington was forced to send a pair of B-52 bombers through a hastily erected Chinese 'air defence zone' last year.

All of which, Mrs Obama will be resolutely trying to ignore as she travels around China marvelling at pandas, terracotta warriors and the scholarly prowess of – no doubt carefully selected – Chinese schoolchildren.

However, there is already no shortage of acid criticism from the Chinese public using the Internet. "That silly woman," remarked one critic. "Last time when Mr Xi and his wife went to the US, she refused to meet. Now what does she want? Just kick her out."

Others questioned the use of public money, lately a hot-button issue in China because of the current administration's insistence that Chinese officials are seen to lead frugal lives.

"How come the liberals are not criticising the first lady for holidaying on public money? She is even bringing her mother-in-law for heaven's sake!" remarked one.

Yet more saw the trip as some great geopolitical game. "She is trying to win China over to the US so that we do not side with Russia. We should fully support Russia, the Americans are not reliable. They will always want to keep us down."

And when it does comes to policy, the accent will all be on the positives, encouraging people-to-people exchanges such as the official '100,000 Strong Initiative' that aspires to send that number of American students to China – balancing the large numbers of Chinese coming in the opposite direction.

Maintaining her resolutely soft focus from the off, Mrs Obama has been doing her homework by visiting a dual language Mandarin-English charter school in Washington last week where she was warned by the children not to forget her hand sanitiser, expect "super different lavatories" and beware the chicken's feet at dinnertime.

"I have all of these wonderful policy people that help me prep," she told the children, before apparently conceding they were really surplus to requirements. "I'm going to look to you guys to be like my advisers on this trip."去年六月份，米歇爾•奧巴馬無緣她丈夫和中國主席之間一次十分重要的“只穿襯衣的峯會”，那次會面本應是中美“第一夫人”第一次會面；習近平主席的妻子是一位優雅的人民解放軍歌唱家，與美國第一夫人相比，她在中國具有足夠的明星實力。

然而，大約九個月之後，中國大衆終於有機會在本週看到兩位第一夫人會面了。米歇爾•奧巴馬會帶着兩個女兒，瑪麗亞和薩沙，一同來華六天半，作爲家庭之旅的一部分，也是軟實力外交的一部分。

第一夫人米歇爾•奧巴馬一直以來都不把自己封閉在安穩的生活環境中，她爲退伍老兵爭取工作，促進教育工作發展，提倡兒童健康飲食，但是她認爲訪華就像在拉緊的政治繩索上行走。

此次訪華將於3月19日在北京開啓，包括與彭麗媛姍姍來遲的會面，之後會有幾次對學校和高校的正式訪問，以表對中美教育交流的重視，隨後會去北方城市西安看看著名的兵馬俑，再到南方成都看看大熊貓。

瑪麗亞和薩沙自從她們的父親贏得選舉後一直儘量減少曝光於鏡頭之下，不過這次她們是焦點。

據說，薩沙曾在學校學習普通話，在2011年的國宴上，爲了檢驗她的中文水平，她用“你好”與前中國主席胡錦濤打招呼。中國也十分想看看她的普通話是否有進步。

然而，此次訪華在國內已經引起了一些疑問，米歇爾•奧巴馬是否真的能在中美關係這一政治競技場中履行其一直堅持的非政治形象。

在白宮網站，此次訪華定義爲“正式訪問”，米歇爾•奧巴馬的東翼工作人員努力使此次訪問與她之前前往墨西哥，印度或南非旅行的性質相同，並在博客中邀請全美國的小學生髮郵件說一說米歇爾•奧巴馬應該問一些什麼問題。

她寫道，“這次會去北京一所大學和兩所高中，還有成都（這兩個城市在中國都是大城市）。我會和學生們聊一聊他們在中國的生活，講一講美國，以及我們珍視的價值觀和傳統”。

米歇爾•奧巴馬決定不談論複雜的政治問題，這一點已經與兩位前身、勞拉•布什和希拉里•克林頓形成鮮明對比。

米歇爾•奧巴馬此次旅行在中美關係過去九個月相對困難這一背景下開啓，而在加利福尼亞陽光之鄉表達出了很多美好的願望，這是一次新的機會與中國新一屆主席重新開啓新的關係，以表期待。

國際方面來看，自加利福尼亞以來事情變得緊張。據說奧巴馬總統不會在下個月的亞洲訪問中在北京停腳，相反，他會去日本，韓國，馬來西亞和菲律賓。

這些國家都警惕地關注着習近平主席領導下的中國，去年，華盛頓只能派一對B-52轟炸機前往匆忙建立起的東海防空識別區。

總的來說，米歇爾•奧巴馬決心忽視這些，而此次旅行的關注點在熊貓，兵馬俑和博學勇敢的中國學生身上，毫無疑問是精心選出的。

然而，中國大衆網絡上也不乏各種刻薄的批評，一個批評說，“這是一個愚蠢的女人，上次習近平主席和夫人去美國時，她拒絕見面。現在她又想要什麼啊？把她轟走”。

一些人質疑公共花費的問題，因爲最近這在中國是相當敏感的一個話題，因爲此屆政府堅持中國的官員應當過節儉的生活。

一人評論到，“爲什麼自由主義者們現在不批判第一夫人用公款來度假了？天哪，她甚至帶着她的母親啊”。

然而，更多的人認爲這次旅行是一場地緣政治遊戲。“美國希望贏得中國的支持，這樣我們就不會站在俄國那邊。我們應該完全支持俄國，美國人不可靠。他們只想讓我們衰落”。

但是，當談論到政策時，所有的聲音都是積極的，鼓勵人與人之間的交流，例如正式的“十萬強計劃”，致力於鼓勵這麼多人數的美國學生到中國學習，來平衡大量到美國來學習的中國學生。

爲了堅決維持她此次出行成爲軟焦點，上週她親自前往華盛頓一所中英雙語學校，孩子們囑咐她別忘了洗手液，期待廁所有大的改變，並注意晚餐的雞腿衛生。

在表示他們真的擔心過多之前，她告訴孩子們，“有很多優秀的人都在幫我做準備，我期待你們可以成爲我這次旅行的指導者”。