Obama on China: ‘Neither Our Enemy Nor Our Friend’
By Graham WebsterApril 27, 2007, 02:50 pm UTC+8
Barack Obama, a U.S. Senator and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, is a brilliant rhetorician. But it’s notoriously hard to pin down his opinions on discrete policy areas and questions. It’s reasonable to speculate that the campaign is intentionally avoiding staking out policy ground unnecessarily this early in the campaign. But recently, some hints about Obama’s thinking on China have emerged.
China Redux compiled two quotes, of which this is the more interesting. From his prepared remarks for a speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (when I was an intern there, it was the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations):
And as we strengthen NATO, we should also seek to build new alliances and relationships in other regions important to our interests in the 21st century. In Asia, the emergence of an economically vibrant, more politically active China offers new opportunities for prosperity and cooperation, but also poses new challenges for the United States and our partners in the region. It is time for the United States to take a more active role here – to build on our strong bilateral relations and informal arrangements like the Six Party talks. As President, I intend to forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.
This is by no means a profound statement; but Obama’s call for stronger involvement in East Asia and a “regional framework” tells us that he views the region holistically rather than as a series of bilateral relationships. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but he seems to be on the right page.
I want to add to the Redux post one more statement by Obama on the importance of East Asia and China. This is from the first Democratic primary presidential debate of the 2008 election cycle last night:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Senator Obama, what are America’s three most important allies around the world?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, I think the European Union as a whole has been a long-standing ally of ours. And through NATO, we’ve been able to make some significant progress. Afghanistan, in particular, is an area where we should be focusing. NATO has made real contributions there. Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we’ve rooted out terrorism in that region. We also have to look east, because increasingly the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia. Japan has been an outstanding ally of ours for many years, but obviously China is rising, and it’s not going away. They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region. That’s something I’d like to do as president.
This frame of China as competitor might seem to part with the cooperative answer he gave before, but the argument seems to be: We can compete and cooperate at the same time. To be sure, neither the United States nor China can compete without a baseline of security and cooperation to keep markets moving.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
when will the U.S. realize that china is not our ally? They are a hostile nation that hides their true intentions. Is America really this ignorant and dumb? We better start becoming more self-sufficient , or at least have a back-up plan if a war starts with china , becoz more than likely it will sometime in the future, and we are too dependent on china. America is a hypocrite. Its all about the money. China is communist. What happened to the war on communism before?, What makes china special? China is nothing but a land of greedy , nasty, ignorant people and if they could , they will try to buy the U.S…… America= what a joke.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:31 am
I really hate communism and communist! period. I just can’t hide. I know I am a stubborn old man.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:17 am
To ?:
You need to travel more. China is no longer communist. It has single-party rule, still, but the economic system is no longer communist, and free enterprise abounds. There is even talk of renaming the Communist Party something else, because it is not communist any more. State-owned industries have steadily been dismantled and privatized since Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese historical mentality is not one of conquest but of maintaining stability (since Confucius first set the civil service exam system around 500 B.C.). The last thing the Chinese want is a war with the U.S. Don’t forget that China was carved up by European colonialism and wound up in a civil war because of this. The goal of China’s leaders is not to let that happen again. The U.S. bombed a Chinese embassy and a U.S. spy plane killed a Chinese airforce pilot off the coast of their country, and did China make any hostile moves? They had plenty of cause to, but they didn’t. The goal is stability. To achieve that, of course, they need to be strong and have relations so that no one will want to attack them.
So, it’s time to get over your paranoia. Instead, acknowledge that the West was pretty rotten to China during colonialism (e.g. Opium War).
February 18th, 2008 at 4:59 am
This is interesting. Let’s look at it with a bit of compassion shall we?
I speak from the standpoint of an American-born Chinese. China is not full of people who are ignorant by choice. I believe that they are a product of the kind of one-party education they were submersed in since birth, not attuned to making political and social decisions for themselves because they were never given the opportunity.
Communism is not solely an economic system; a communist nation can have all the goods it needs, but its people can still be totally shut off from information they need to form solid opinions. I dare call it brainwashing. For example, I have met so many people from Mainland China who have friends who practice Falun Gong, whom they admit they admire personally, but at the same time, they insist that Falun Gong is an evil cult as the Chinese government claims. They can’t seem to figure out that the disparity is the clear result of government propaganda that does not match up with true-to-life experience.
Yes, the Western world has been terrible to China. We should not treat them badly, and yet that’s what is happening now. In continuing to live the lie of “stability,” we are hurting both ourselves and China economically and socially. The US has become seriously dependent on Chinese imports while accumulating a huge trade deficit toward China, and the Chinese, driven by the US’ demands for low prices, are forcing their workers out of decent working conditions—and that force is coming from the top: Without the regime’s constant false reassurance that “Mother China is getting stronger,” Chinese citizens would surely wake up to the sad reality that is their situation.
February 18th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Thanks everyone for the comments. I wonder, does anyone have any thoughts on how a President Obama would really behave regarding China?
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Obama has a group of about 20 advisors specifically designated to assist him with issues involving East Asia. The Obama campaign has declined to release the names of all the participants, but a published list of foreign policy experts officially endorsing Obama includes Mr. Art Brown, former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and Chief of CIA’s East Asian Operations Division.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I have read all the three comments and I can appreciate where they come from. Because, after His Honorable President Nixon’s failed engagement with China after the distorted Watergate incidence, and, in order to engage China-America into closer cooperative relationship, I started His honorable President Carter who invited Mr. DanXiaopin to the UnitedStates; which in turn started the dialog of cooperation between the two nations.
My late father was an army General of the late Honorable Generalizimos Chiang Kai Shek who fought the second WW against the Japanese invasion into China. He retired to Hong kong after the surrender of the Japaneses. He was invited to go back to China “to serve the people”, which he refused to do. I graduated from the National Taiwan University. I must present certain facts instead of politics taking certain names. Since the Carter’s administration had given china the support in the United Nation on the permenant seat and consider china an equal trading partner, china had gradually discard certain socialist idiology- Hong Kong is as free a place as any place in the world, in fact has improved. Taiwan has not been militarily invaded, nor propagandary chalanged in my seven years studied on the island. Tibet incident a few weeks ago, the western reporter there on the first day of the incident was surprised that there was not one police or soldier there to maintain the order, let alone any form of suppression…..I can go on and on. These are the facts, so I am leaving these here for your dissection. To add one more, when I lost everything after over twenty years of practice in the USA , for an unforeseen reason, we lost everything. China let us sell the properties of my late father, and that is how I still have a home to live in, inside this “free” country, where I worked hard with my family for decades.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
To ?:
A person who even was afraid to disclose his name is not just stubborn, but a stupid, ignorant coward who is living under the US government’s propoganda against China or in his own narrow-minded imagination, for his entire miserable “old” life, who still can’t live without buying Chinese goods, who is greedy to invade any country in the world to rob others of their land, oil, life and ideaology. Please get yourself educated and grow up!