Reuters reports on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attendance at a Shanghai Expo, where the U.S. representative avoided addressing human rights issues in Communist China.

In December 2009, we posted on Secretary Clinton’s calls for a “Pragmatic Policy” on Human Rights, support for “Principled Pragmatism” on Communist Chinese government abuses.  In February 2009, the Daily Telegraph and CNN reported on Secretary Clinton’s view that human rights issues must be secondary to economic interests in U.S. foreign policy with Communist China.  Secretary Clinton stated that “Successive administrations and Chinese governments have been poised back and forth on these issues, and we have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.”

Clinton avoids China disputes, hands out teddy bears
— Reuters reports: “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton passed out teddy bears to Chinese children as she toured the Shanghai World Expo on Saturday and carefully skirted the United States’ many policy disputes with China.”
— At Shanghai expo, U.S. ” films made no explicit reference to democracy, human rights, freedom of religion or other political issues where the United States has long criticized China’s record”
— “U.S. exhibit ends with a gift shop where a great many products — from teddy bears and stuffed bison to silver lapel pins and pink cowboy hats — were all marked ‘Made in China.'”