Joe Biden Handing Out Good Advice in China, He Should Try it on Obama

Joe Biden has spent the last week in China, his
trip
announced as tensions in the South China Sea escalated, but the
vice president
did not publicly comment on the Air Defense Zone dispute when
meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He did make a lot of
other comments, dispensing advice to China’s people and government,
advice it’s not clear his own government supports or follows.

For example, speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce in
Beijing on the second day of his trip, Biden
urged China to expand press freedoms and to stop punishing news
agencies that report critically of the government, an astonishingly
tone-deaf and oblivious thing to say even for Joe Biden, given the
Obama(-Biden) Administration’s veritable
war on journalism. Attempts to punish news agencies for
unfavorable coverage is not unknown to the administration either,
with the White House media arm starting Obama’s first term by

trying to pick a fight with Fox News.

Biden started his trip to China with a surprise visit to the
consular section of the US embassy in Beijing, where he
seemed to urge Chinese youth to challenge authority. Just this
May, President Obama told American youth to “reject” cynical voices
that warn of tyranny “always lurking just around the corner.” Obama
made those comments just a few weeks before the first of the NSA
revelations and
the string of deceptive and untrue statements he made in
defense of the disclosed activities

Joe Biden gave the Chinese some good advice. Free speech and
questioning authority certainly helped make America what it is, as
Biden noted. But he should also realize its advice he should be
dispensing in his own administration first, especially as he

looks to how far coattails can take him in 2016.