China has, for the last decade, been thought of as the country of the future. It’s runaway economic growth and increasing diplomatic efforts have excited and frightened many. China and the US have generally friendly relations (although I wouldn’t say we have good relations). The New York Times recently said that the approach of the Bush administration to China was to, “[view] China more as a rival than a partner and [keep] relations fixed on economic matters like exchange rates.” I disagree with that view. I personally think Jacques deLisle’s assessment that, “with Beijing’s acquiescence in Washington’s antiterrorism agenda looming so large among U.S. China policy goals, and with economic issues crowding out other concerns in the bilateral relationship, Beijing could extract concessions and avoid scrutiny that its actions at home and abroad otherwise would have faced from Washington,” is more accurate. (Click here to read his entire article from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, it’s excellent.)
So, what can we expect in the way of China policy from the Obama administration? Secretary Clinton told the BBC that, “on climate change, pandemic prevention, nuclear proliferation, on all of these serious threats and challenges that we face, we are going to assume a leading role again.” Indeed, she’s stated on a couple of occasions that we’ll be looking for concessions on climate change. She also announced to the Asia Society that the US and China will resume mid-level military-to-military discussions.
We’ll see. If China catches the flu because our economy caught a cold, relations will sour (China has already indicated that it blames the US for the current world economic troubles). We’ve been trying for 30 years to get China to better its human rights record to no avail. The most troubling thing I see in our relationship is that China refuses to transparently show its increases in military spending. What sticks and carrots we have remain to be seen.
I’ll leave you with some words from Secretary Clinton,
Even with our differences, the United States will remain committed to pursuing a positive relationship with China, one that we believe is essential to America’s future peace, progress, and prosperity.
An ancient Chinese story tells of warring feudal states, whose soldiers find themselves on a boat together crossing a wide river in a storm. Instead of fighting one another, they work together and survive. Now, from this story comes a Chinese aphorism that says, “When you are in a common boat, you need to cross the river peacefully together.” The wisdom of that aphorism must continue to guide us today.
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The only problem with Clinton’s story. About the boat is that after they crossed the river together one beheaded the other and went on. There was a lack of research done by the speech writtier while writting this. As all Chinese know this story it was an embasserment that Clinton did not know the end of the story.