Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in China this week rather than at the Democratic National Convention, and she’s not getting nearly as warm a welcome as the party faithful might have given.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, regarded as the nation’s next leader, did not show up for a press conference with Clinton this morning.
“Clinton’s scheduled talk this morning with Vice President Xi Jinping had been called off by the Chinese side,” Time’s Hannah Beech explains, so Clinton had another press conference with the Chinese foreign minister in which she “sidestepped a question about whether Xi’s cancellation might reflect tensions between the world’s two biggest economies at a time when competing territorial claims in waters off China have marred the People’s Republic’s relations with its maritime neighbors.”
Clinton decided not to attend the DNC because she did not think it would be appropriate for a sitting Secretary of State to participate in such a political event. In February, though, she predicted that Obama “will be reelected President.”
