This is a letter (http://forum.globaltimes.cn/forum/showthread.php?t=12869) to U.S. President Barack Obama from "LTML", a Chinese Internet user. President Obama and all Americans should read it carefully and seriously.

If anyone can hand this letter to American media or government, or even President Obama, please don't hesitate to do so.

Dear Mr. President,

I have heard that you care for the voices of web users. I have also noticed that you requested a direct dialogue with web users to answer their questions and concerns during your visit to China last November. Your attention to web users has encouraged me to write to you. I am an ordinary web user from China. What I want to talk to you about is the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which has raised a heated discussion on the Internet in China. I sincerely hope this letter reaches you, and that you would be able to hear the voice of an ordinary Chinese web user and his wishes for reunification and peace and his nation.

In your speech to Chinese youth in Shanghai you said, “The U.S. does not seek to contain China... the rise of a strong and prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations…In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game. Nations need not fear of the success of another… We welcome China's appearance on the world stage…” You have called for “changes” during your election campaign; so I think your words “does not seek to contain China” show your sincerity in making some “changes” in Sino-U.S. relations. The first thing that comes to mind is that the U.S. government under you, unlike your predecessors, will not annoy China about China’s reunification and the Taiwan Question, as the Chinese nationals really appreciate the current peaceful cross-Straits relationship.

However, two months after you left Shanghai, your promises of “the U.S. does not seek to contain China’s rise” and “my administration fully supports a one-China policy” are weirdly mingled with your decision to sell arms to Taiwan. I am not sure if I have interpreted you wrongly. Either you have not changed, or you have changed so fast that I do not even have the time to picture what great peace and happiness your promises would bring to the people across the Taiwan Straits. Of course, I hope I am not wrong in understanding your promises, and you are not changing fast. Because a president who brings hope into the White House, is not expected to “change nothing” or “change too fast”.

I enjoyed your speech and admired your speaking skills. I really wish you could meet the Chinese youth and the Chinese web users, and explain whether your promises to them or to China have changed. But I would like to add a note here. We do not need lame explanations like “arms sales to Taiwan are good for security across the Taiwan Straits”, because it is an insult to our intelligence if we believe in such excuses. It is a simple fact that for the separatists, the more advanced their equipment is, the more they would want to split from the nation. In the American Civil War, the southern rebels were even crazier in their fight with the Federal Government under Abraham Lincoln after they received military support from Britain.

Mr. President, when you first put your hands on the Bible that Abraham Lincoln once used and vowed to be the 44th president of the United States, many people called you “Lincoln the second”. There are even people in the media who count the similarities between you and Lincoln: you are both from ordinary families, and you both have brilliant talents and eloquence. You also said you are a fan of Lincoln in your autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. But no matter how many similarities you and Abraham Lincoln might have, I, as an ordinary Chinese, think you have one deep-rooted difference. The difference is that President Lincoln had suffered from the splitting pains of his nation, and bore hatred toward the external power that intervened to split his nation; but you did not.

Mr. President, you are a knowledgeable man. You must have remembered the Trent Affair during the American Civil War, where President Lincoln bit the bullet and accepted the unreasonable demands of the British to release the special envoys the southern rebels sent to Britain. However, during that time, Lincoln told his people “that was a pretty bitter pill to swallow, but I contented myself with believing that England's triumph in the matter would be short-lived, and that after ending our war successfully we could if we wished call England to account for the embarrassments she had inflicted upon us.”

Mr. President, do you know that by selling arms to Taiwan and interfering in the reunification of China you are compelling Chinese people to swallow a bitter pill? Has it occurred to you that the leaders in China might have spoken the same words your idol, Abraham Lincoln once said, namely that “we wished to call America to account for the embarrassments she had inflicted upon us”?

Yours sincerely,

LTML
A Chinese web user from bbs.huanqiu.com

Feb. 2, 2010