Without saying definitively he would not attend the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing one month from today, U.S. Senator Barack Obama said as president he would skip the ceremony without hearing from the Dalai Lama that there had been progress on the Tibet issue.

“In the absence of some sense of progress, in the absence of some sense from the Dalai Lama that there was progress, I would not have gone,” Obama said at a news conference, according to the Associated Press.

From a Chinese perspective, the statement that Obama would take cues from the Dalai Lama is quite bold and constitutes a public articulation of which side the candidate has chosen in the Dalai Lama–P.R.C. disputes. While few would be surprised to hear a Democratic candidate support human rights in Tibet, it’s diplomatically significant if enunciated.

The AP article notes that Obama had encouraged President George W. Bush to skip the ceremony, as had Senator John McCain in April.

McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent, also issued a hypothetical ultimatum, similarly saying that he would only attend the ceremony if he saw improvements on human rights issues. McCain’s April statement was in some ways stronger than Obama’s most recent one, though he did not allude to taking cues from the exiled Tibetan leader.

“If Chinese policies and practices do not change, I would not attend the opening ceremonies,” said the Arizona senator, who has clinched the GOP nomination for president. “It does no service to the Chinese government, and certainly no service to the people of China, for the United States and other democracies to pretend that the suppression of rights in China does not concern us. It does, will and must concern us.”

These statements, which apparently promise to show symbolic support in exchange for concessions on human rights issues, recall the early Bill Clinton administration principle of conditional engagement: The United States would work with China on trade in exchange for rights improvements. What the candidates haven’t mentioned is that when Clinton tried this tactic, it either failed or was abandoned in favor of, say, less-conditional engagement.

Could the candidates be reacting to George W. Bush’s friendly behavior toward China in the way that Clinton reacted to George H. W. Bush’s? The current president, for one, comes near toeing the Chinese line in his most recent statement, promising to attend the ceremony. Skipping the event would be “an affront to the Chinese people,” he said.

It’s been a while; to any loyal readers, my apologies. Since Monday evening I’ve been in Japan traveling, the first time I’ve left China after moving there last July. Writing now on the train between a visit in southern Kyushu on my way to Hiroshima, I’ll save you my personal reflections. I did see something of interest, however, in today’s Japan Times. The paper carried a Kyodo story on a U.S. professor’s advice to Japan.

In brief, the story reports that Kent Calder, director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., urges that Japan be more “proactive” in its post-Bush relations with the United States. He also said that an Obama presidency may be more conducive to changes in Japan policy from the U.S. side than a Hillary Clinton or McCain administration.

The article leads with Calder’s comments on a concept called “Japan passing,” meaning essentially U.S. policy discussions going on without much discussion of this country. Indeed, as I wrote earlier, for example, China and Iraq are among the most talked-about countries in Clinton’s foreign policy, whereas Japan plays a small role. (Perhaps I will have time to compare that work with Obama and McCain.) The story may be using Calder’s statements to imply a general apathy in U.S. policy circles toward Japan, which I think isn’t true. Without knowing more about Calder’s work and statements, I can’t say what he thinks, but I do believe that economic and East Asian security concerns would prevent any U.S. government from ignoring Japan.

Calder said energy efficiency and environmental technology are strengths for Japan and might serve as a good way to increase its international influence. “Japan is the only major nation of the major energy producers whose consumption in the last three years or so has gone down,” Calder said.

Anecdotally, I see positive and negative forces at work in Japan on energy efficiency over the last few days. Mass transit is of course a strength here, and over two days in an area of Kyushu with fewer train options, I was glad to see light-engine automobiles either at parity with or outnumbering larger engines. Meanwhile the lack of good insulation in many regular Japanese residential and public buildings represents a huge opportunity for retrofitting to prevent energy waste as heating or cooling is lost through under-insulated walls. (As I write this, I am passing the most industrial and pollution-spewing vista I have encountered in Japan, off the shinkansen tracks near Tokuyama Station.)

I have taken an unanticipated break on this site because of an uptick in my paid workload: Sinobyte, my blog on Chinese technology and society for the CNET Blog Network, is now in its third month. I have also had work to do on some new consulting before what, barring any unforeseen changes, will be my return to the United States this fall for more academic work on East Asia. I am sure I will have more to say after my stay in Hiroshima, and most likely more to come after my return late this month to Beijing.

It’s Iowa caucus day in the U.S. election, so time for a bit of China-election news. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican nomination, promises to “level the playing field” with China in a new ad (below). And Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic candidate, said he would ban all toy imports from China—and then took it back.

Romney’s ad is more recent than Obama’s toy trouble. Bill Powell at Time’s China Blog, noting that the ad appeared on the eve of today’s Iowa caucuses, cranked up the sarcasm for this one:

Never mind that former Governor Mitt Romney doesn’t exactly say how he’ll “level the playing field” with an economy that’s growing “three times faster than ours” (presumably not by getting Americans to work in factories for a dollar an hour). At least the guy devotes 30 seconds of television time to the second most important foreign policy subject out there. Maybe some crack American political reporter will actually ask him about it.

Or, more likely, not…

As for Obama, I was on the road for two weeks in December and failed to comment on this story. Luckily China Law Blog had some coverage of Obama’s pre-Christmas statement that he “would stop the import of all toys from China.” CLB collected blogger reaction, including from China Venture News, which wrote, “The bottom line though is this: China trade is not a simple “us and them” issue. The companies making toys in Shanghai and Shenzhen for export to America send their profits to New York and are parts of joint ventures that have stockholders in the suburbs of Chicago, Boston, and Topeka.”

The Obama campaign later said that the statement had not been rendered by the press with appropriate context. From Reuters via NYT:

“Now, don’t get me wrong: As president, I’ll work with China to keep harmful toys off our shelves,” he said in Greenfield, Iowa, according to a statement from his campaign for the November 2008 election, . [sic]

On Wednesday, Obama had told voters in New Hampshire: “I would stop the import of all toys from China,” which supplies about 80 percent of U.S. toys.

A spokesman for Obama, Josh Earnest, said the candidate had been referring in New Hampshire to banning “toys that contain more than a trace level of lead, coming from China or anywhere else.”

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has added a level confrontation to her rhetoric on China, warning in a phone call with Iowa voters that toy and food imports from China could be a threat during the U.S. holiday season. “One of the things I don’t believe we should have to worry about is the safety of our food that is served for Thanksgiving or the toys that we buy our children for Christmas,” she said.

“I’ll improve the safety of children’s toys and stop dangerous toys from getting into our children’s hands by completely banning lead in children’s toys,” she said. 

“If China expects to do business with the United States, they’re going to have to meet higher standards.”

And if American companies think that they can get a cheaper deal by going to China, well, they’re got another thing coming, because they’re going to have to meet the same standards.”

Clinton also claimed experience confronting China, referring to her speech at the U.N. World Conference on Women as first lady in 1995. “I went to Beijing in 1995 and stood up to the Chinese government on human rights, women’s rights,” Clinton said.

Or did she? Here’s the portion of her speech that most directly addresses the Chinese government:

I believe that, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Bejing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights. [...] 

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. [...]

Women must enjoy the right to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.

It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend — or have been prohibited from fully taking part.

Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing they, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions. [emphasis mine]

The second to last paragraph refers to the fact that some members of NGOs were unable to attend the conference because of Chinese government objections. This does not seem to me to be a particularly strong statement, though it certainly would not have gone unnoticed by the diplomatic class.

Indeed, the remarks may have been carefully calibrated to make headlines without being especially disturbing to U.S.–China relations, which at the time were strained because of a visit to the U.S. by then President of Taiwan Lee Teng-hui. From The New York Times’ report on Sept. 6, 1995:

A senior Administration official traveling with Mrs. Clinton was at pains after the address to explain that it did not mark a return to a more vocal confrontation with China over its poor human rights record. In recent months, Washington has sought to tone down its public remarks on human rights abuses in favor of a more private dialogue that had few results.

“There is nothing in her speech that in any way deviates from our approach on China,” the official said, “or on our desire to get the relationship stabilized and to get some momentum going. This is a United Nations conference and she was speaking out on a global problem.”

At the time, the first lady told a press conference, “To me, it was important to express how I felt and to do so as clearly as I could.” I’d say the message could have been more clear, but clearly the message got to the Times.

ALSO: In my Googling on this issue I found that Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap has picked up on this as well.

(h/t The China Game)

Viewing U.S. presidential politics from thousands of miles away is a bit of a relief for someone like me. But I still enjoy watching the debates in webcast form to keep an eye on the tone of competition. I should say, I enjoyed it. Heading over to MSNBC.com to catch up on the recent Democratic debate, I was stopped at the door for holding the wrong internet passport:

MSNBC is not the only site to block visitors from some countries. The music site Rhapsody refuses me service while in China. Google Video also refuses my requests, though it at least apologizes:

Thanks for your interest in Google Video.

Currently, the playback feature of Google Video isn’t available in your country.

We hope to make this feature available more widely in the future, and we really appreciate your patience.

These are just the few cases I can remember off the top of my head. Many other sites have refused service since I moved to China. As of now, I don’t know how far-reaching these restrictions are, but I don’t have any reason to believe it’s just China. I have some memory of reading about sites that only work in the United States or their home country.

There are several possibilities as to why this happens. Here are a few:

• Copyright concerns. Rhapsody, for instance, may not be ready to defend its delivery of copyrighted music to some countries. Though there are no such issues with a U.S. presidential debate, MSNBC may simply have disabled video delivery abroad because of other copyright concerns, thereby unnecessarily narrowing the reach of its non-copyright-sensitive material.
• Money. Streaming video is an expensive service. It involves either a large cost in development and maintenance or large fees to an established streaming service such as Akamai to run the show. If streaming is ad-supported and advertisers aren’t interested in an audience outside of the United States, then there is a financial incentive not to serve foreign visitors. (When I listen to podcasts from U.S. National Public Radio programs, they often ask me to support my local station so that the podcast can be paid for. The smarter pitches, which acknowledge that I may not have a local station, ask me to support the program’s home station.)
• Self-censorship. Perhaps the most insidious reason would come into play if it turns out that these blocks were specifically directed toward China. It might represent a decision by U.S. content providers to censor what they provide to Chinese visitors in hopes of preventing a move by the Chinese government to block their sites overall. This is not an unreasonable fear, as we have seen with Google’s Blogger and YouTube services, among others. These sites may not always be blocked, but uncertainty about their accessibility makes it unlikely that advertisers would choose these sites to reach a Chinese audience.

Amidst recent rumors about Facebook’s possible entry into the Chinese market with a facebook.cn service, some very smart people have been remarking on a “silo” effect when national networks are created for otherwise transnational services, making cross-border communication more difficult. As Rebecca MacKinnon writes:

If they do end up having to create different Facebook “silos” in order to be compliant with Chinese government censorship requirements (and maybe other governments with other language services too), it isn’t just a missed opportunity to provide a great global, multilingual service that many people would find incredibly exciting.

The silo-ing of social networking sites like Facebook (and MySpace China already) is a sadly missed opportunity to build bridges of communication and understanding between the Chinese-speaking world and the English-speaking world.

The same applies when information is limited to borders. The key here of course is that these decisions are business decisions. MySpace, Facebook, and MSNBC are designed to make money from their audience, not foster international connections. I just hope they find ways to do both.

Clinton says the U.S.-China relationship will be the world’s “most important bilateral.” What should Japan think?

The main candidates for U.S. president are all contributing essays on their foreign policy vision to Foreign Affairs, and Sen. Hillary Clinton (as well as Sen. John McCain) came up this issue. Tobias Harris, in an entry called “The Vanishing Ally,” notices that Clinton made a bold statement, putting the U.S. relationship with China at the top of her list of priorities.

“Our relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century,” Clinton writes. She continues:

The United States and China have vastly different values and political systems, yet even though we disagree profoundly on issues ranging from trade to human rights, religious freedom, labor practices, and Tibet, there is much that the United States and China can and must accomplish together. China’s support was important in reaching a deal to disable North Korea’s nuclear facilities. We should build on this framework to establish a Northeast Asian security regime.

But China’s rise is also creating new challenges. The Chinese have finally begun to realize that their rapid economic growth is coming at a tremendous environmental price. The United States should undertake a joint program with China and Japan to develop new clean-energy sources, promote greater energy efficiency, and combat climate change. This program would be part of an overall energy policy that would require a dramatic reduction in U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

We must persuade China to join global institutions and support international rules by building on areas where our interests converge and working to narrow our differences. Although the United States must stand ready to challenge China when its conduct is at odds with U.S. vital interests, we should work for a cooperative future.

Dealing with China is just one of many issues Clinton’s essay lists as challenges for the next president (some others—two wars, Iran, “a resurgent Russia,” threats to Israel and oil supplies in the Middle East, climate change, and possible global epidemics). But consider this quick count of the most-mentioned countries. The count includes adjectival forms, so “China” and “Chinese” would both be counted.

(This counting exercise I admit can be a bit silly; it threatens to elevate a Foreign Affairs piece to the level of the State of the Union. But it can demonstrate just how high on the public agenda China has risen, at least in the mind of Clinton’s foreign policy writing.)

Regarding the statement that the U.S.–China relationship is the century’s most important, Tobias writes, “That may be disconcerting for Japan, used to hearing U.S. officials insist on the importance of the U.S.–Japan relationship, but it also happens to be true.” He adds later, “[T]he U.S.–Japan relationship could be an essential part of the U.S. approach to China, helping smooth China’s ascension to regional and global leadership (and hold China accountable). Senator Clinton hints at this—she mentions cooperation on clean energy—but no policymaker or presidential candidate has discussed a Sino–U.S.–Japanese triangle.”

Given that the Sino–Japanese–U.S. triangle was my blogging bailiwick for an entire year, I can confirm that, indeed, no one talks much about this. But I don’t go as far as Tobias when it comes to actually fearing the U.S. government under a new administration would forsake Japan. Japan remains essential to the United States as a security and economic partner. All sides of the triangle need both security and business relations to remain smooth throughout the trilateral. It may be the case the Clinton and her campaign simply decided against giving much space to reiterating the U.S. relationship with Japan in this particular essay. It looks to me from the table as if some countries were included in the essay as a political hat-tip (see especially the passage on Latin America, where the Bush administration is scolded for inattention but Clinton offers little other than a laundry list of nations).

My main message here is that this is a campaign document, not so much a policy proposal. It may have been a bit of a diplomatic gaffe not to give Japan a little more space, but I doubt the omission will have any adverse effect on the campaign. On the other hand, when China-related issues inevitably come up in force during the Olympics in August 2008, just three months before the general election, it will be key for candidates to have a record on China. Barring any unforeseen disasters, Japan will not likely be a major topic in U.S. media coverage leading up to the election.

A press release from the Hillary Clinton campaign uses China as the primary “other” for the United States, a nation to which the United States should compare its progress.

An Oct. 10 press release outlining Clinton’s agenda on “Rebuilding the Road to the Middle Class” comes with several policy proposals and an attempt to frame the country’s economic challenges. And in the process of framing, China is set up as a main challenger for the United States, and a main point of comparison for U.S. development. Here, in full, is the section outlining “The Challenges”:

Other nations are increasingly investing in their innovation infrastructure, positioning themselves to challenge our leadership. In the last 12 years, China has doubled the percentage of GDP dedicated to R&D, and over that same period GDP itself doubled. Also, our share of the world’s scientists and engineers is declining, and too few American college students are preparing themselves for these careers. Fewer than 20% of American undergraduates are earning degrees in science or engineering, compared with more than 50% in China. Between 1970 and 2000, our global share of PhDs in science and engineering declined from 40% to 20%. And today, our global ranking in broadband has deteriorated to 25th.

Here, China is the primary “other” to which U.S. achievements are compared.

Later, in a section outlining a proposal for more education funding, China again is the only country named in comparison. “Education is the ultimate innovation prerequisite, but we are ceding ground to other nations,” the release states. “For example, 50% of undergraduates in China are earning degrees in science and engineering, but in America the rate is less than 20%. Our global share of PhDs in these fields has declined from 40% in 1970 to less than 20% today.”

Clinton’s rhetoric in this document compares the United States to China and to the world at large. But notably, no other country or political unit, not even the European Union, is mentioned by name. This is not an overt statement on China, but it tells us something about the way Hillary’s campaign views the rhetorical landscape: Among world powers, they apparently believe, the media and voters are concerned about China above all others.

Tomorrow, Clinton calls the U.S.–China relationship the world’s most important for the coming century, and Japan faces a demotion from the position of the United States’ most important Asian counterpart.

The Council on Foreign Relations has compiled a summary of what the candidates for U.S. president have to say about China, or really, what they’ve had to say—most statements are vague and many are a few months old. The CFR compilation only tracks more prominent statements on China. Statements not directly related to China, say releases accompanying Obama’s support for a Senate bill banning lead in products for children, don’t make it in.

Here’s a summary of the major points for the major candidates. I’m adding in some recent commentary and links via my Google Alerts and other feeds.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D–N.Y.)
• Clinton’s most prominent statements on China came last March and included a few media appearances in which she called for the U.S. to reduce its dependency on Chinese lending. This came amidst a series of visits to China by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a surge in media attention to the U.S.–China trade imbalance surrounding the Chinese stock scare that winter. CFR links to the same article that many other sources do when talking about Clinton and China. It’s the article that triggered my March 3 entry on this site.
• Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama both said they would support punitive tariffs against China if it doesn’t revalue its currency. The National Interest cites this among the reasons the United States and China may be headed toward a trade war.
• CFR also dug up a 2005 release on Clinton’s Senate website asking President George W. Bush to bring up human rights in talks with the Chinese government.

Sen. John Edwards (formerly D-N.C.)
• Edwards has kept quiet on China for quite a while. CFR notes the speech he made in 2006 at the Asia Society in which he declared the U.S.–China relationship his country’s most important bilateral relationship. The speech is something I never got around to writing about here, partly because the speech itself didn’t reveal much of interest. …
• … But, in the Q&A, Edwards did have something interesting to say on the China–Darfur issue. In response to a question from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, he said:
  

  I mean, the starting place is something that we’re not doing, which is to make it a priority - to make it a priority that the Chinese are propping up these governments and in the case of Sudan, allowing a genocide to continue. I think the first thing is we have to make it a priority in our relationship with China. And the Chinese have to know that it’s a priority.

  That’s something to watch as the issue festers leading up to the Olympics. File it under “stuff he said that someone will quote sometime”—especially if he gains in the polls.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)
• Obama’s “neither our enemy nor our friend” statement is still the main enunciation of his view on U.S.–China relations. Instead, he said, the countries are “competitors.”
• CFR notes Obama’s speech at my former haunt, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in which he said he’d “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.”

Next up: the Republicans.

After almost two months in China (Friday makes it official), I’ve settled in to a rhythm of life in Beijing and I think it’s time to revive this site. I’ve missed a lot of news, which is OK with me. In the future, this blog will be less news-oriented (though as a journalist I can’t imagine I’ll leave it all behind). I’m also still working on a new format and identity for the site which I think will fit my interests. But for now, let’s just review some of the things I’ve missed in the last two months.

In no particular order:

• As we all know by now, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is finished. I’ve found Observing Japan to be the best source for detailed news on the selection of Fukuda Yasuo as the next prime minister. Most recently, the tireless blogger-scholar behind OJ gives us analysis of how Fukuda has made some peace in the party by appointing faction-heads to the cabinets.
• Very little has been said about China in the U.S. presidential contest over the last few months, but …
• Sen. Hillary Clinton’s trouble with a fugitive donor changed triggered some conservative criticism of her and her husband’s connections to Chinese (really, Chinese-American) money. See here for a representative example. I wrote about Clinton’s most prominent statement on China so far in this election cycle back in March.
• A recent violent roundup of black drug dealers and many other innocent black people in Beijing brought disquiet in the expat community. Though I was in the area the same night, I left too early to see it first hand. A first report came from Jen Brea, and a later, more detailed one from Chris O’Brien. A Newsweek blog has another first-hand account from an expat who was forced to delete photos of the event.
• A correspondent in Kyushu e-mailed with some interesting survey results (via Japan Probe and Jun Okumura, another great blogger on recent political developments).
  • In a survey of Chinese, 78 percent saw Japan as a threat, followed closely by 75 percent perceived a U.S. threat.
  • Forty-six percent of both South Koreans and Japanese saw China as a threat, and more than 70 percent of both of those populations saw North Korea as a threat.
• W. David Marx and friends launched Néojaponisme, an online journal that will eventually supplant Marxy’s Néomarxisme “post-blog.” I highly recommend the first week-long series, a detailed and interesting interview with Patricia Steinhoff, a sociologist and professor at University of Hawaii who has studied student radicalism in Japan with some of the best sourcing around. Start reading here. And I’m not just plugging this because you’ll see my work on the site in the future as a contributor from Beijing.

That’s all for now.

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.