The summit served a useful purpose in improving atmospherics. Obama said the US welcomed the rise of China (something I remember hearing Bill Clinton tell Jiang Zemin in 1995), and at the State Department luncheon I attended, Hu spoke of becoming a responsible great power. Now we will wait to see if Chinese behavior changes when he gets back home. It is interesting to note that China is running a billboard advertisement in Times Square in New York as part of its soft power campaign. As I argue in The Future of Power, if Chinese soft power increases in the US and American soft power increases in China, that can be a win-win situation in conflict avoidance. Polls now show about half of the American public has a positive view of China. But release of Liu Xiaobo from prison would do a lot more for China's soft power than Hu's admission yesterday that China still has a way to go on human rights!
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Liu is in jail because he seriously broke the law. As reported in the court papers, he took money from a foreign entity (in this case funded directly by the legislature of a hostile foreign government), AND he attempted to influence domestic politics. Actually in this case he went far beyond influence politics, as in funneling foreign money into electoral politics (quite a few were thrown in jail in the U.S. just a few years back for doing that). Liu's '08 Charter went to the extreme of demanding the abolition of the form of government expressly provided for in the Chinese Constitution.
LOTS (tens of thousands or more) of Chinese disagree with their government, just like in other countries, and they make their voices heard. They are not in jail. Liu is in jail because he BOTH took foreign government money AND he tried to influence domestic politics. That is punishable and punished all over the world, including the U.S.A.
Talk about chutzpah, considering it is widely reported that it was the U.S. Congress that funded this crime through the NED..
It's definitely an ad aimed at building its soft power assets in the US, though a bit of a blunt, overly obvious way of going about it.