Clinton’s assessment of Xi Jinping, the tough-minded president of China, was far more flattering. In a June 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs, Clinton praised Xi as a “more sophisticated, more effective public leader” than his predecessor, Hu Jintao. She noted that Xi had brought to heel the corrupt and nationalistic Chinese military, a development she hailed as “good news” because the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, as it is known, had grown too powerful and aggressive under Hu. “The biggest supporters of a provocative North Korea has been the PLA,” she noted.
In Clinton’s speech, made about one year after Xi became the leader of the world’s second largest economy, she said: “He lived in the United States for a short period of time, actually lived in Iowa on a – on a farm. He was working in agricultural issues within the Communist Party, you know, about 30 years ago.”
Clinton also praised Xi for his ability to consolidate his power in the party and army within a short time as well as his reforms.
“He has consolidated his power quite quickly over the military and over the Communist Party. He has set forth a plan for economic reform, some of which is quite far-reaching, and some social reform as well like, you know, saying they’re going to end, at least to some extent, the one-child policy.”
The leaked emails also revealed Clinton saying in a speech to Goldman Sachs in early April 2013: “I think it’s a good news, maybe not so good news story about what is going on right now in China. On the good news side I think the new leadership – and we’ll see more of that when Xi Jinping gets here in the United States after having gone to Latin America. He’s a more sophisticated, more effective public leader than Hu Jintao was.
“He is political in the kind of generic sense of that word. You can see him work a room, which I have watched him do. You can have him make small talk with you, which he has done with me.
“His experience as a young man coming to the United States in the 1980s – going to Iowa, spending time there, living with a family – was a very important part of his own development.
“So he’s someone who you at least have the impression is a more worldly, somewhat more experienced politician. And I say that as a term of praise, because he understands the different levers and the constituencies that he has to work with internally and externally.
“That’s especially important because of the recent moves he’s making to consolidate power over the military.”
When asked whether Xi’s daughter Xi Mingze, was studying at Harvard University, Clinton replied: “Yes. They don’t like you to know that, but most of the Chinese leadership’s children are at American universities or have been.
I said to one very, very high ranking Chinese official about a year, year and a half ago – I said: I understand your daughter went to Wellesley. He said: Who told you? I said: OK. I don’t have to punish the person then.”
China’s President Xi Jinping meets senior officers of the People’s Liberation Army. Photo: Xinhua
Clinton underlined that it was a good news when Xi was doing much more to try to assert his authority, saying: “One of the biggest concerns I had over the last four years was the concern that was manifested several different ways that the PLA, the People’s Liberation Army, was acting somewhat independently; that it wasn’t just a good cop/bad cop routine when we would see some of the moves and some of the rhetoric coming out of the PLA, that in effect were making some foreign policy.”
She said that Hu, unlike former president Jiang Zemin before him, had never really captured the authority over the PLA that was essential for any government, whether it was a civilian government in the US or a communist party government in China.
“So President Xi is doing much more to try to assert his authority, and I think that is also good news.”
In contrast to her vocal praise of Xi, Clinton said of Hu in her memoir Hard Choices, published two years ago: “He lacked the personal authority of predecessors such as Deng Xiaoping or Jiang Zemin. Hu seemed to me more like an aloof chairman of the board than a hands-on CEO.”
‘China’s Xi Jinping better politician than Hu Jintao’: Hillary Clinton’s speeches revealed by WikiLeaks
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-worldview-leaked-speech-excerpts-
In her own words; from a speech to the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago in October 2013. Leaked by “arm of the Russian government” WikiLeaks.
“I said, ‘You know, Mr. Prime Minister, we actually have some things in common. We both want to protect wildlife, and I know how committed you are to protecting the tiger.’ I mean, all of a sudden, he sat up straight and his eyes got big and he goes, ‘You care about t...he tiger? I said, ‘I care about the tiger, I care about the elephant, I care about the rhinoceros, I care about the whale.’
So we go down the stairs, we go down this long hall, we go into this private inner sanctum. All of his, you know, very beefy security guys are there, they all jump up at attention, you know, they punch a code, he goes through a heavily-armed door. And then we’re in an inner, inner sanctum with, you know, just this long, wooden table, and then further back, there’s a desk and the biggest map of Russia I ever saw. And he starts talking to me about, you know, the habitat of the tigers and the habitat of the seals and the whales. And it was quite something.
I last saw [Putin] in Vladivostok where I represented President Obama in September for the Asia Pacific economic community. I sat next to him. He’s an engaging and, you know, very interesting conversationalist. We talked about a lot of issues that were not the hot-button issues between us, you know, his view on missile defense, which we think is misplaced because, you know, we don’t believe that there will be a threat from Russia, but we think that both Russia and the United States are going to face threats from their perimeter, either from rogue states like Iran or from terrorist groups, that’s not the way he sees it.”
