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Asians cheer Obama’s victory
Senator Barack Obama “rewrote American history” when he claimed victory in the Democratic primaries, The Press Trust of India editorialized.
The South China Morning Post, the largest English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, called Obama’s win “a turning point in U.S. politics.”
Across Asia - a continent with roughly half of the world’s 6.6 billion people - people welcomed Obama’s victory.
“There has never before been an American presidential candidate like Barack Obama,” the South China Post wrote in a Thursday editorial. “Charismatic, black, multicultural, urbane and an orator, he has captured the imagination with his platform of change.”
Indonesians have been particularly supportive of an Obama presidency. Obama lived in the predominantly Muslim nation from age 6 to 10 with his mother and Indonesian stepfather.
“Indonesians are very confident that Indonesia-U.S. relations will be much warmer when Obama is at the helm in the White House,” the Jakarta Post newspaper said on Thursday.
“They also believe the world will be much more peaceful under Obama and that the nightmare under George W. Bush will pass as bitter history never to be repeated,” the newspaper added.
In Japan, which has had a close relationship with the United States during the administration of President Bush, some experts have worried that a Democratic president would seek closer ties with China - to Japan’s detriment.
But former Japanese ambassador Ryozo Kato said that Obama “is the only politician who delivered very meaningful speeches about the bilateral relationship with Japan ahead of the respective U.S. visits of [former] Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda,” the Yomiuri Shimbun reported last week.
He added that Obama is “a very pragmatic person” and said that “Whoever will become the U.S. president, it’s important that Japan remain a nation that is not negligible”.
China’s state-run media did not editorialize on Obama’s win. The Chinese government traditionally has favored Republican Party candidates because they have been more likely to promote free trade - helping Chinese exports.
But Jin Canrong, an expert in international relations at People’s University in Beijing, said many Chinese intellectuals welcomed Obama’s victory.
“The intellectual community feels that it shows that multiculturalism in the U.S. is growing and the mainstream is becoming more tolerant,” Jin said.
Comments
By who cares
June 10, 2008 1:30 PM | Link to this
Of course the indonesian muslims and chinese cheered. barack is a muslim communist who will pander to theses quackos. he’ll spend al lthe tax payers’ money on helping the muslims and africans. He’ll turn white men into slaves and white women into breeders of black muslim babies. he will enact his church’s black mans law-all blacks will own what the whites have-a mugabe production. Lord save us and give us St. Reagan!
By HM
June 10, 2008 4:45 PM | Link to this
Please. Do the world a favor. Take a knife to your throat, or at the very least the iddy biddy thing hangin a little south of there. One of you is more than enough.