A senior diplomat from China took center stage this week as international intrigue swirled through Portland's Classical Chinese Garden, normally a serene refuge from Old Town traffic and world affairs.
Gao Zhansheng, Beijing's San Francisco-based consul general, congratulated managers of The China Press Weekly at a gala reception Thursday for launching an Oregon edition of their Chinese-language newspaper.
While many U.S. papers shrink, the fat, color-printed Chinese broadsheet is expanding across America and opening a one-man Portland bureau. Gao seized the chance to praise the mainland-friendly publication and to begin repairing Portland ties frayed by a recent dust-up over Tibet.
"China Press has made a wise decision to start publication in Portland," Gao said. "Oregon is a strong power in this country."
As China extends its own so-called soft power in the United States, Portland is emerging as an unlikely front in Beijing's campaign to boost appeal through cultural, educational and diplomatic efforts. Members of the cast of characters who assembled -- and a few who notably didn't -- around the garden's pond Thursday embody global currents in a usually placid Chinese backwater.
Gao, dapper in a dark pinstripe suit and U.S.-China lapel pin, represented Beijing ascendant, presiding as star attraction in the garden's central pavilion. Watching from across the pond, Dave Porter, who wages a crusade to increase Mandarin-language study in Oregon, expressed mild irritation at the segregation.
Gao had planned on meeting Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who skipped the event because of illness, to discuss a China business trip the governor will take in May. The Chinese diplomat had expected not to meet with Portland Mayor Sam Adams, who missed the reception, citing a conflict.
Adams peeved consular officials last month by issuing a proclamation supporting Tibetans and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader. Gao, whose deputies called on Adams arguing that he should rescind Tibet Awareness Day, said in an interview Thursday that the action surprised and pained Chinese, who viewed Portland as especially close.
"If it happened in other cities maybe we could understand, but not in this city," Gao said. "We are ready to move forward, and the mayor knows our position."
Gao laughed off a rumor that he would decline Adams' visa application for a China trade trip.
Behind Gao stood Jin Lan, a Vancouver-based China-business consultant who possesses an uncanny ability to attract high-ranking Chinese officials to Portland.
Lan heads the Oregon-Fujian Sister State Association. By some measures the most influential local Chinese at Thursday's gathering, he delivered the shortest speech.
Bespectacled Xie Yining, chairman and president of The China Press, appeared as a beneficiary of Beijing's sudden interest in Portland. Xie's New York-based newspaper -- Qiao Bao, in Chinese -- has a reputation for toeing Beijing's party line as the publication presents what he terms timely, reliable and balanced information about China.
Xie, a former reporter for China's state-sponsored Xinhua news agency, said his free weekly newspaper is expanding circulation into western Oregon because of the area's growing Chinese community.
Xie figures that the area has at least 70,000 people able to read Chinese, an estimate considered high by local China watchers. The China Weekly, which claims a U.S. circulation exceeding 200,000, is distributed in New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
"We have a plan to extend our service to all rapidly growing Chinese and Chinese-American communities," Xie said. Next stops: Houston, Austin and Dallas.
The expansion into Oregon challenges Portland's two locally owned Chinese-language newspapers, PCT Printing's Portland Chinese Times and China Media's Qiao Shengbao. The new beachhead also could well be intended as a propaganda challenge to a newspaper available in Portland and nationally called The Epoch Times, said China-hand Bruce Gilley, a Portland State University professor too new on the local scene to have been invited Thursday.
Epoch Times is published by the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is vilified by China's leaders as a dangerous cult. The publication earns the sort of enmity from Beijing once reserved for pro-Taipei newspapers, whose partisanship has diminished as the Taiwanese issue loses steam.
A string of Oregon politicians whose aides read congratulatory messages at the garden included U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., a staunch Taiwan defender who has criticized mainland China's human-rights record, alienating some business constituents.
Wu described The China Press Weekly as a reliable and balanced source of information that serves as "a tool for transparency, freedom of expression and citizen empowerment." Julia Krahe, his communications director, said later that Wu was excited to have a new publication in Oregon, regardless of any particular political approach.
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