Xi Jinping and Barack Obama in Brokeback Mountain parody
Presidents are due to meet in California today
On the day the Chinese leader meets his US counterpart at an informal summit in California, the British-based weekly newspaper parodied the film Brokeback Mountain, a story of the forbidden and secretive relationship between two cowboys.
Xi concluded his three-day state visit to Mexico on Thursday and departed for California, where he will meet Obama for the first time since taking office in March.
High on the agenda will be cybersecurity in the wake of allegations that China hacked US secrets.
On Thursday, family members of prisoners asked President Barack Obama to urge China’s new leader to free 16 inmates, saying human rights needed to be a priority at their tone-setting summit.
“This summit is not only about personal friendship building. It’s a summit between the presidents of two countries and they should have a purpose to build a more just society,” said Chen Guangcheng, the blind self-taught lawyer who dramatically escaped house arrest for the US embassy in Beijing last year.
“President Obama should stop the trade-centered diplomacy and instead make it a human rights-centered diplomacy,” Chen, who studies in New York, told a news conference in Washington by video link.
