BEIJING - Openings over the environment, closer collaboration
on North Korea, and no mention of the prickly issue of human
rights: at the weekend summit between US
President Barack Obama
and his Chinese counterpart
Xi Jinping, the US seemed to pick up
where ties got derailed - that is, in Copenhagen in December
2009, when Obama and then prime minister
Wen Jiabao failed to
reach an agreement on the environment. Xi reciprocated by
demanding respect for the new status of his country and
reopening the sensitive and important military dialogue.
Sure enough, the two great powers did not come to any precise
agreements. But the most important development was that the two
heads of state managed to talk openly and in a freewheeling
manner for some eight hours. That is the longest free discussion
between American and
Chinese leaders since Richard Nixon and
Henry Kissinger chatted away with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in
1972 for 17 hours.
The meeting of Obama and Xi was the first such outside of the
usual diplomatic trappings for many years - even Deng Xiaoping
did not engage in the sort of free-flowing discussion that on
the Chinese side is considered a way to revamp bilateral ties in
the most powerful manner since Mao's times. The location was no
accident, either: California, the part of America projecting
into the Pacific Ocean, but still in America and not China, the
location of Nixon and Mao's meeting.
In a way, US-China ties seem to be back to where Obama left them
in 2009, when America was deep in financial crisis and China had
just emerged as a real challenger to the US as a global power.
However, the past four years didn't pass in vain. America
launched its policy of a "pivot to Asia" - actually a "pivot to
China" - which by all practical accounts encouraged many of
China's neighbors to express their tensions with
Beijing (or if
you wish, to not back down to Beijing's encroaching presence),
and thus making the international atmosphere around the growing
giant almost suffocating.
Then, in this light, the summit is very different from those of
the past. China is looking for a new "great powers
relationship", and, de facto, Obama has offered a grand
framework that both reassures the hawks at home and paves a new
way ahead. He has surrounded China and set de facto siege to it
with the pivot to Asia without even being on the frontline but
rather by letting some of its eager allies go ahead. On the
other hand, like all good strategists, Obama has offered China a
way out: the collaboration sketched out at the weekend.
Without a way out, sieges can have unexpected results. A
cornered enemy fighting desperately for his life could break
through the siege and turn the battle around - or die out while
killing as many enemies as possible. That happened before World
War I, when Great Britain surrounded Germany with a series of
alliances that isolated Berlin, leaving it no way out except a
humiliating surrender or a nasty war.
The result was that Germany, feeling cornered and a without way
out while also fearing surrender and buoyed by a string of
victories - the last being in 1871 against France, once the
great power of continental Europe - went to war to break the
siege. The end result was the defeat of Germany, but the fight
was so bitter that it also wrecked the British Empire. The
Obama-Xi summit should then be the beginning of a way out of the
siege for China, but also a way for America to avert a potential
risky and very costly confrontation.
The proof of the changing relationship will come with a new
agreement on the environment, something close to Obama's green
heart; but also, more practically with an agreement on North
Korea, where Beijing has promised tighter enforcement of UN
sanctions. This, and Beijing's leaning on Pyongyang, should
bring North Korea back to the negotiating table about
dismantling its nuclear capabilities.
Collaborating on a common goal is extremely important and brings
the two nations together. However, this will not suffice to
convince the common people in America, the ones who cast their
votes in the ballot boxes, that China is trustworthy.
Decades of propaganda against communism, a system that turns men
into machines, and the subtle yet deep prejudice against the
wily and devious Chinese create suspicion about Xi and his
fellows in the Chinese government. The Chinese in American pop
culture for many years have been the hyper-educated, mean, and
totally cynical Fu Manchu or the loyal yet sketchy and broken
English-speaking detective Charlie Chan. Beijing's leaders are
both communist and Chinese, so how can the American people trust
them?
Moreover, strategic collaboration is fine, but the financial
crisis fractured the basis of common interest that bound the two
countries together for almost 20 years. During that time, the US
invested in China, China improved its technologies and exported
goods to the US, and China used part of its earnings to buy US
Treasury bonds. However, China's growth led to a devaluation of
its dollar assets, thanks to the revaluation of the yuan, and
the US financial crisis destroyed hundred of billions in Chinese
financial assets.
China then cannot go on buying bonds ready to be burned or
dumped in the next trade row or economic crisis. The two
countries need a more solid economic grand bargain. Bill Mundell
(see
Accentuate
the positive, Asia Times Online, June 6, 2013) explained
the necessity of turning Chinese financial investments into
stakes in American infrastructure. The US needs to rebuild its
infrastructure, which is putting a huge brake on its
development; and China needs to hedge its US investments from
inflation or devaluation. Then a part of the trillions of
dollars of Chinese foreign reserves could be turned into
minority stakes in US infrastructure.
In this case, the rise of China would not hamper the incumbent
power, the US, but would prop it up and help its redevelopment.
Then, for the first time in history, two powers could develop
together, and actually the development of China could help in
the redevelopment of America.
The idea may be sound, but many issues have to be addressed,
both on the investment side and on the side of perception,
making the Americans can get over their deep-seated fear of the
communist Chinese. Moreover, the world is not made only of
America and China. Everybody knows that a rapprochement of the
two giants could squeeze the rest of the world, starting with
the Asian countries, which were so prompt to line up against an
expanding China.
Their interests and positions need to be addressed rapidly,
especially by China, which in no way should be perceived as
taking advantage of its newly improved ties with Washington to
bully its neighbors or forget its wider agenda. If Beijing does
not act quickly enough, the combined pressure on Washington by
countries and governments far and near could push the US down
the road of harsher dealings with Beijing. This means a lot of
work and rethinking in Beijing, and it means that to work, these
new ties need much more than an eight-hour informal meeting.
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