asap Editor Ted Anthony. (AP Photo Illustration/Jacky Myint)
Podcast: On President Hu's visit to Yale.

Chinese President Hu Jintao ended his trip to the United States with an appearance at the campus of Yale University on Friday, where he had a chance to talk about his country's evolving role in the world.

Plenty of protesters -- many of them supporters of the Falun Gong spiritual movement -- also had their say.

asap Editor Ted Anthony, whose resume includes a stint as the AP's news editor in Beijing, was in New Haven for Hu's speech. He says Hu "was telling the story of Modern China to America."

"Usually when America is paying attention to China it's about trade disputes or it's about something with protesters," Anthony said. "Here Hu was able to bring a very positive message and tell the story he wanted to tell."

As he was taking it all in, Anthony had a conversation with Eliza Cooke Browning for an asap podcast, which you can either play or download using the links on the right.

Here's a taste of their conversation:

BROWNING:

What do you think we will see from China, and how will it affect us, in the next 10 years?

ANTHONY:

I would not be surprised if they're running bets on that in Vegas -- it's so unpredictable. When Bush took office in 2001, there were some real hopes of very quick increased closeness with China, and then all of a sudden, in April of that year was the Chinese spy plane conflict that pushed things back for many, many months.

With China you never know. Both sides -- they try to sound accommodating, but by the same token, they have their positions. The Chinese are very, very sensitive about Taiwan. The Americans right now are very, very sensitive about the trade balance and about the value of the yuan.

Hu is right: This is a relationship that has seen a lot of twists and turns, and I think there are going to be a lot more of them. And I think that if both leaders keep their heads about them, then we're probably going to keep pushing forward.

It may be one of those relationships where nobody's entirely happy, but that the preservation of the relationship itself is more important than making one side happy all the time.

BROWNING:

You were news editor in Beijing. Can you tell a difference between what he said now, versus what kind of things you picked up two years ago?

ANTHONY:

I think that they certainly play to the audience. The method of speech delivery in China is, shall we say, not Clintonian. It's not exactly the most fluid type of thing. It's very structured, it's very -- not to put too fine a point on it -- dull.

It was clear that he was a little bit more metaphoric with his words here. Part of that may be that he's been the number one guy now for two and a half years. He has come out of the shadows. He was regarded as very much of an enigma when Jiang Zemin was in power, and I think he may be coming into his own a bit.

That doesn't necessarily mean to me that he's a smooth operator, that he's going to go down in history as a great orator. But I do think that he has learned to play to the audience, whether the audience is the United States or the global community. And he's learning to tell China's story.

I think, as anybody who pays attention to how modern stories are told knows, it's the storyteller who captures the audience who's going to prevail in history. And so I think he's very aware of the fact that he's characterizing China for an era, and his words are chosen in that vein.

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Ted Anthony is asap's editor. Eliza Cooke Browning is an asap reporter based in New York.

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