美第一夫人米歇尔将携女访华

　　First lady Michelle Obama will head to China for a week-long official visit on March 19, the White House announced Monday. She’ll be accompanied by her daughters, Sasha and Malia, and her mother, Marian Robinson, but President Obama won’t tag along. He’s got a trip of his own to Europe and Saudi Arabia planned for that time period.

　　Education will be a major theme of the trip, and Mrs. Obama will visit with Chinese high school and university students. She’ll also meet Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

　　The first lady is encouraging US students to follow her progress via the White House website. She’ll be posting a daily travel blog and taking and answering kids’ questions.

　　Issues such as education, escaping poverty, and easing climate change are the same around the world, wrote Mrs. Obama in a message to students on the White House blog Monday.

　　“These issues affect every last one of us, so it’s critically important that young people like you learn about what’s going on not just here in America, but around the world,” she wrote.

　　On Tuesday Mrs. Obama will visit a District of Columbia charter elementary school with a Chinese-language international baccalaureate program, as preparation and publicity for her trip.

　　It’s not the first time the first lady has set out on solo diplomatic visits. In 2010 she assessed earthquake damage in Haiti, then continued to Mexico for meetings on getting youths engaged in important political and economic questions. In 2011 she traveled to Botswana and South Africa sans spouse.

　　In doing so, she’s continuing a modern tradition. First ladies are unique ambassadors for the US. They’re important in a political sense, but their visits aren’t as divisive or high-stakes as those of presidents can be.

　　Eleanor Roosevelt pioneered such trips, as she did with so many other aspects of the modern role of first lady. She was the first presidential wife to travel overseas on her own. As a representative of the Red Cross, she traveled to England and Ireland and US bases throughout the Pacific in World War II.

　　The Kennedy administration deployed first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to unique effect. Admired throughout the world, she built goodwill for the US in solo trips to Greece and Italy. In 1962 she was officially designated a “goodwill ambassador” for a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

　　More recently, Laura Bush traveled to the Middle East as first lady to promote breast cancer awareness. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a solo trip to China in 1995 to attend a UN Conference on Women, where she called on the host nation to do more to push progress in gender equality.

　　But first ladies are not immune from overseas missteps. During a solo foray in the Middle East in 1999, Mrs. Clinton listened as Suha Arafat, Yassir Arafat’s wife, gave a speech in which she falsely accused Israel of using poison gas on Palestinians.

　　Mrs. Clinton hugged Mrs. Arafat at the end of the lecture.

　　“The First Lady’s politeness was taken as substantive agreement with Arafat’s inflammatory charges,” Brookings Institution Vice President Darrell West wrotein 2010.

　　白宫周一宣称，“第一夫人”米歇尔将于3月19日前往中国进行一周的官方访问，随行有她的两个女儿萨莎和马利亚及其母玛丽安•罗宾逊。然而奥巴马总统并不同行，他那段时间将访问欧洲和沙特阿拉伯。

　　教育将会成为此次访问的首要主题，米歇尔将走访中国高中和大学与学生见面，同时将与中国主席夫人彭丽媛见面会谈。

　　米歇尔积极鼓励美国学生通过白宫网站紧随她的进程，她会每天发表旅游日志，并听取以及回答孩子们的问题。

　　米歇尔周一在白宫博客写给学生的信息中这样写道：像教育、摆脱贫穷和缓解气候变化在全世界都是同样存在的。

　　她写道：“这些情况影响着我们每一个人，所以对你们年轻人来说，不仅要去了解美国发生了什么，还要知道全世界的事，这对你们来说是至关重要的。”

　　米歇尔将于周二访问以教授中文闻名的华盛顿育英学校，看望在这里学习中文的美国学生，为她的出访准备和宣传。

　　这并不是米歇尔第一次单独出访。2010年，她在海地地震做了损失评估，随后又继续前往墨西哥出席研究讨论使青少年参与重要政治经济问题为主要内容的会议。2011年她又只身前往了博茨瓦纳和南非。

　　在这过程中，她一直保持着现代传统，“第一夫人”是美国独一无二的大使，她们具有重要的政治意义，她们的访问也不会和总统访问一样容易造成不合和具有高风险。

　　埃莉诺•罗斯福开创了这样的访问，她处理了“第一夫人”现代角色的许多方面，她是第一个独自访问海外的总统夫人。作为红十字会的代表，她走访了英格兰、爱尔兰以及美国二战期间在太平洋的基地。

　　肯尼迪政府使“第一夫人”杰奎琳•肯尼迪散发着独特的影响。受到全世界钦佩的她，在只身拜访希腊和意大利时为美国建立了良好的友好形象。1962年，在访问巴基斯坦和阿富汗时，她被正式授予了友好形象大使的称号。

　　再往后，“第一夫人”劳拉•布什也走访了中东促进人们对乳腺癌的意识。希拉里•克林顿1995年也独自前往了中国参加联合国妇女大会，并在会上呼吁东道国采取更多措施积极推进性别平等。

　　但是“第一夫人”也不能完全免于犯下外交错误。在1999年独自访问中东的过程中，希拉里听了亚瑟阿拉法特的妻子苏哈•阿拉法特的话，后者错误地指责以色列对巴勒斯坦人使用毒气。

　　讲话结束时希拉里拥抱阿拉法特夫人。

　　“第一夫人的礼貌被认为是实质上赞同了与阿拉法特夫人煽动性的指控。”布鲁金斯协会副主席达雷尔•韦斯特在2010年这样写道。