When President Barack Obama meets with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit held in Rancho Mirage, Calif., the president will not be joined by First Lady Michelle Obama, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The meeting between the two powers is supposed to be an informal, even intimate, introduction with hopes of harboring a genuine rapport between the leaders. Xi has brought along his wife, the beautiful singer Peng Liyuan, and they may perceive the absence of the first lady as a snub.
"In terms of diplomatic etiquette, Chinese will definitely feel that the United States is lacking unless they can come up with a really solid excuse," Deng Yuwen, a Beijing based foreign policy commentator, told the Los Angeles Times.
The excuse the White House has offered is that the Obama daughters are finishing up school this week and the first lady felt like she needed to be there.
Cheng Li, a senior fellow on China policy at the Brookings Institution, spoke with The New York Times that the Chinese would be disappointed by the first lady's absence.
"They certainly have very high expectations for this meeting," Cheng said, adding that the first lady's absence "certainly needed some explanation."
Cheng would also tell The New York Times that he believes that the Chinese will understand familial obligations necessitating the first lady to stay in Washington.
Zhang Ming, a political scientist at China's Renmin University, disagreed with Cheng, telling the Telegraph that the first lady's absence will "not go down very well" in China.
"First lady diplomacy is also very important and the U.S. side has failed to cooperate," Zhang said. "According to normal diplomatic etiquette this is very strange. It shouldn't be like this."
"Maybe Michelle [Obama] doesn't like Xi Jinping - or maybe she is just really busy," Zhang continued. "But being busy shouldn't be an excuse for missing an event like this."
The Los Angeles Times reports that there has been some speculation that the first lady is avoiding the meeting on purpose because she doesn't want to meet Peng. As a singer for the Peoples' Liberation Army Peng spent her career singing Chinese Propaganda, including singing to soldiers involved in the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, and some speculate that this is why the first lady would want to avoid her.
The relationship between China and the U.S. is very important to both countries and the goal of this summit is to start to build a personal relationship between President Obama and Xi so that relations between the countries don't become unnecessarily tense, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Hopefully the absence of the first lady won't cast too big of a pall on the meetings. Shi Yenhong, an international relations expert at Renmin University, put things into perspective when speaking with the Telegraph.
"Michelle Obama and Peng Liyuan are both very charming and both have a positive image," Shi said. "But there is no such thing as diplomacy between first ladies. Diplomacy is conducted by presidents."
