A reasoned response to China hysteria

Nina Hachigian, a former National Security Council adviser during the late ’90s, writes a conspicuously reasonable-sounding response to the U.S. media’s increasingly alarmist reporting on the United States–China relationship.

The early stages of the U.S.-China relationship during the Obama administration have not played out according to the usual script. The president did not promise on the campaign trail to be “tough” on China—a position he would have been forced to abandon within a few months just as Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton did. In the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis, the Obama administration instead came to office wanting to preserve the stability of the U.S.-China relationship while also placing a new emphasis on joint global problem solving.

This is not appeasement. This is common respect and pragmatism born of looking down the road at a whole host of challenges where the only way forward is to cooperate with China. It is also part of a larger administration effort to mend fences around the world by listening and extending basic courtesy, both of which cost nothing.

She also outlines some of the accomplishments of Obama’s China policy so far, including progress on climate cooperation (despite the ongoing blame-game over whether China caused a failure in Copenhagen, where no one expected a full-scale deal in the first place). China and the U.S. have worked together at the U.N. on North Korea and Iran.

Hachigian notes that “China’s reaction to all of these actions—so far at least—is well within historical norms, especially given that Tibet and Taiwan touch at the core of Chinese anxieties about territorial unity and foreign intervention.”

It’s nice to see this kind of talk on China coming out of my former employer, the Center for American Progress, but I would have liked it even if I had no affection for the institution.

A strange photograph

U.S. President Barack Obama and PRC Premier Wen Jiabao were photographed in Copenhagen. Where the heck are they?

Two things China and the U.S. can celebrate

Economic prosperity and basketball. Those are two things neither the United States nor China could seem to live without these days. This by way of mentioning the White House Flickr feed, which is pretty cool. Here, “Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, center, holds the autographed basketball given to him by President Barack Obama following their Oval Office meeting Tuesday, July 28, 2009, to discuss the outcomes of the first U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Looking on at left is Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo.”

The straw man of Internet-fueled civil discourse

Just because people are online doesn’t mean they engage in civil public discourse. This simple idea has emerged as one thread of conventional wisdom in recent years, especially in the context of the People’s Republic of China. In an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, Rebecca MacKinnon reinforces the idea:

Back in 2001 a U.S. spyplane made an emergency landing on Hainan island after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet which crashed into the sea. If people in the Chinese Internet chatrooms had gotten their way, the U.S. crew would be in a Chinese jail today. In a recent interview with The Atlantic’s James Fallows, the President of the China Investment Corporation Gao Xiqing pointed out that his P.R. department is inundated with public comments calling for him to sell U.S. dollar assets.

This sort of argument, parallel to the idea that the United States might not like what it sees if some states hold truly democratic elections, has become so common  that I wonder whether MacKinnon can still reasonably say, as she does in the letter, “Americans tend to think of the Internet as the medium that will inevitably free the Chinese people of authoritarian rule.” Maybe my reading diet has become more isolated, but I don’t hear that argument anymore except as a foil. Is the narrative of a liberalizing Internet medium becoming a straw man?

Obama Says He Would Hear From Dalai Lama Before Going to Olympic Ceremony

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.

The U.S. Candidates on China I: Democrats

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.