President Obama will meet with PRC president President Xi Jinping on Friday and Saturday, the first get together since Xi assumed his nation’s leadership. The meeting follows recent high-level visits by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Treasury Secretary John Lew.
The usual visual pomp accompanying state visits will be noticeably absent from the event, which will take place at the secluded Annenberg Estate in California. White House sources maintain that the President hopes to establish a good working relationship with Xi. The two first met last year before Xi’s ascension.
Security Issues
A number of serious issues exist between the two nations, including China’s rapidly growing military might and its ongoing cyber-attacks and espionage against the United States and its allies. While spying is normal between great powers, the unprecedented size and scope of Beijing’s efforts against American military, governmental and corporate targets more closely resembles full scale clandestine warfare rather than the normal cold war cloak and dagger interchange.
North Korean nuclear weapons development is also a crucial issue. Beijing wields extraordinary influence over Pyongyang, but has done little to dissuade it from its bellicose actions, missile development, or atomic weapons programs.
Donilon notes:
“The Chinese military is modernizing its capabilities and expanding its presence in Asia, drawing our forces into closer contact and raising the risk that an accident or miscalculation could destabilize the broader relationship. We need open and reliable channels to address perceptions and tensions about our respective activities in the short-term and about our long-term presence and posture in the Western Pacific.”
Human Rights
There is a question as to whether Mr. Obama will bring up serious ongoing human rights violations committed by China. According to Human Rights Watch: “[China] continues to be an authoritarian one-party state that imposes sharp curbs on freedom of expression, association, and religion; openly rejects judicial independence and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human rights defenders and organizations, often through extra-judicial measures.
The government also censors the internet; maintains highly repressive policies in ethnic minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; systematically condones—with rare exceptions—abuses of power in the name of “social stability” ; and rejects domestic and international scrutiny of its human rights record as attempts to destabilize and impose “Western values” on the country. The security apparatus—hostile to liberalization and legal reform—seems to have steadily increased its power since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. ..
At the same time Chinese citizens are increasingly rights-conscious and challenging the authorities over livelihood issues, land seizures, forced evictions, abuses of power by corrupt cadres, discrimination, and economic inequalities. Official and scholarly statistics estimate that 250-500 protests occur per day; participants number from ten to tens of thousands. Internet users and reform-oriented media are aggressively pushing the boundaries of censorship, despite the risks of doing so, by advocating for the rule of law and transparency, exposing official wrong-doing, and calling for reforms.
Despite their precarious legal status and surveillance by the authorities, civil society groups continue to try to expand their work, and increasingly engage with international NGOs. A small but dedicated network of activists continues to exposes abuses as part of the weiquan (“rights defense”)movement, despite systematic repression ranging from police monitoring to detention, arrest, enforced disappearance, and torture.”
Commerce
Major issues affecting Sino-U.S. relations concern currency, trade and investment. While the prospect of great gain from trading with the PRC continues to tantalize western enterprises, some observers are reducing their level of optimism.
The American Chamber of Commerce in China has identified potentially unlawful actions employed by Beijing designed to make China dominant in a number of economic endeavors. The Chamber notes that China’s market reforms were ceased in 2002. Central planning and actions designed to place foreign economic interests at a disadvantage were again employed the following year.
Among the most worrisome of the issues facing foreign investors in China is the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR). According to the Chamber’s recent annual survey,
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Forbes summarized:
“If one were to predict the nature of the bilateral relationship over the next few decades by extrapolating from trends during any six-year period between 1978 and 2006, expectations would be quite positive. Despite occasional frictions, the relationship bore fruit for people in both countries and the broader geopolitical and philosophical differences between the U.S. and Chinese governments were, to a large extent, quarantined from infecting mutually beneficial economic relations.
That appears to be no longer the case. Although the massive economic relationship – which reached a record half trillion dollars of trade and investment flows in 2012 – is still mutually beneficial, the future of U.S.-China relations based on developments over the most recent six years appears more problematic. Today, it seems, most bilateral economic frictions are magnified through the prism of those geopolitical and philosophical differences, making controversies seem larger and more intractable.”
Unreality
An aura of optimism, whether warranted or not, permeates Washington’s perspectives towards China.
The Brookings Institute recently urged the President to use Xi’s rise to power as an opportunity to improve relations, but it fails to provide any credible reason why this would be the case.
In his March 11 remarks to the Asia society, President Obama’s National Security Advisor Tom Donilon stated that “substantial progress” has been made in Sino-American relations over the past four years:
“The United States welcomes the rise of a peaceful, prosperous China. We do not want our relationship to become defined by rivalry and confrontation. And I disagree with the premise put forward by some historians and theorists that a rising power and an established power are somehow destined for conflict. … It is not a law of physics, but a series of choices by leaders that lead to great power confrontation. Others have called for containment. We reject that, too. A better outcome is possible. But it falls to both sides—the United States and China—to build a new model of relations between an existing power and an emerging one. Xi Jinping and President Obama have both endorsed this goal. “
A realistic assessment provides no evidence of that progress. Beijing has engaged in wartime-style espionage within the U.S.; it has dramatically ramped up its spending on its armed forces; it has moved aggressively against its neighbors; and it has occupied offshore territory belonging to the Philippines. Donilon notes:
“To that end, a deeper U.S.-China military-to-military dialogue is central to addressing many of the sources of insecurity and potential competition between us. This remains a necessary component of the new model we seek, and it is a critical deficiency in our current relationship. The Chinese military is modernizing its capabilities and expanding its presence in Asia, drawing our forces into closer contact and raising the risk that an accident or miscalculation could destabilize the broader relationship. We need open and reliable channels to address perceptions and tensions about our respective activities in the short-term and about our long-term presence and posture in the Western Pacific.”
Economically, China continues to violate international norms regarding intellectual property rights. Especially important is the issue of cybersecurity. Donilon outlined the economic issues in March:
“It is also critical that we strengthen the underpinnings of our extensive economic relationship, which is marked by increasing interdependence. We have been clear with Beijing that as China takes a seat at a growing number of international tables, it needs to assume responsibilities commensurate with its economic clout and national capabilities. As we engage with China’s new leaders, the United States will encourage them to move forward with the reforms outlined in the country’s twelfth Five Year Plan, including efforts to shift the country away from its dependence on exports toward a more balanced and sustainable consumer-oriented growth model. The United States will urge a further opening of the Chinese market and a leveling of the playing field. And the United States will seek to work together with China to promote international financial stability through the G-20 and to address global challenges such as climate change and energy security.”
The June 7/8 meeting may be the most important conference to date in the 21st century. The military and economic climate of at least the next several decades will be affected by its outcome.