Snowmail: Clinton thanks China
Updated on 21 February 2009
Hillary Clinton makes history in China, writes Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
Hillary Clinton has gone to China to effectively thank them for keeping the US economy afloat and has asked them to keep doing so.
"I appreciate greatly the Chinese government's continuing confidence in United States treasuries. I think this is well-grounded confidence" she said, underlining the need for US-China relations to be taken to a new level.
It doesn't sound very dramatic but it is in diplomatic speak. The People's Republic of China is the biggest single holder of US government debt, and Washington is reliant on that continuing if it is going to raise money for the massive spending spree Barack Obama wants to embark on.
So many will feel that while Hillary didn't exactly get down on her knees, she may as well have done. This is after all the woman who just last year wanted George Bush to boycott the Olympics because of China's human rights record; the woman who boasted in her presidential campaign of having lambasted the Chinese government back in 1995 for the way it treated women.
Just weeks ago, the treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, was accusing China of manipulating its currency and promising to take a strong line against it.
What a difference a global recession makes. Mrs Clinton told the press today she had raised human rights and Tibet on her visit to Beijing, and the Chinese admitted a frank exchange of views had been had.
But the thing the US secretary of state made clear, which her Chinese counterpart underlined, was that economics had to come first.
So what does that deeper understanding that they are talking about mean? Our economics correspondent Faisal Islam is in Beijing and will explain all tonight.
For starters it is the first real recognition by the outside world that China is the new world superpower and we all depend to some extent on its economic decisions.
Of course China has its own economic problems too, falling demand worldwide will inevitably hit it bad and how it invests all the money it has saved in the boom years is going to be a tricky business.
It will demand something in return for its investment and that is likely to be a devaluation of the Chinese currency and better access to American markets.
Dublin: public sector pensions protest
Slightly closer to home tens of thousands of worried Irish public sector workers have taken to the streets of Dublin to protest about pension cut backs. We'll have the latest from a country suffering just as much if not more so than Britain.
Bagram: Afghans won't get US justice
It is a big weekend for coming down to earth for America. A month after Barack Obama stood on the Capitol steps and declared, "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals", his administration has disappointed human rights campaigners by backing the old Bush position on prisoners in American detention in Afghanistan.
They should not have the right to use US courts and US justice to challenge their treatment. This applies to hundreds of Afghans being held at the US base at Bagram.
We have a film on another aspect of this - the Afghan prison where Afghans who were being held at Guantanamo Bay have been sent.
Our correspondent Nick Paton Walsh has been to the site, although he wasn't let in, and talked to people there about conditions inside.
It is another fascinating insight into the compromises being made every day in our name. Of course our government and the Americans insist this is an Afghan facility for which they are wholly responsible. To what extent that is the whole truth is not clear.
Jade's final preparations for wedding
Less than 24 hours before Jade Goody gets married, the dying reality TV star has been doing her best to get ready, with Fleet Street camped outside her door.
To watch last night's report Click here
Ads that make sense in a recession
Back home, in the grips of long and deep recession what is it that makes us spend money on a specific product? Every marketing man will tell you advertising becomes even more important in recession, and cutting ad budgets takes a long time to recover from.
But what kinds of messages do we respond to when we're trying to save money? We'll be having a look at the ads that were the most successful in the recessions of the 80s and 90s and I'll be speaking to one of the titans of British advertising, Sir Frank Lowe.
In the sport
It's Man United v Blackburn Rovers and Gus Hiddink passes his first test with Chelsea taking them to a win against Aston Villa.
