Equals at Last, for Better or for Worse

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Equals at Last, for Better or for Worse
By WILLY LAM
Published: November 18, 2009

While no breakthroughs came out of the Barack Obama-Hu Jintao summit meeting, the U.S. president’s maiden trip to China will go down in history as a pivotal event in the relations between the two most powerful countries of the 21st century.

For the first time, the leaders of the United States and China talked as equals. And the rough parity between an apparently declining superpower and a fast-rising quasi-superpower has major global implications for issues including regional security, nuclear proliferation, trade, climate change and human rights.

The problem is that while its new-found power has emboldened Beijing to assume a much higher profile in world affairs, the Chinese Communist Party leadership has a radically different interpretation from the United States of what China’s international role or responsibility should be.

First, the plus side. Mutual recognition by Washington and Beijing of their status as peers could dispel misunderstandings and facilitate efforts, in the words of the Obama-Hu joint statement, to “deepen bilateral strategic trust” and “take concrete actions to steadily build a partnership.”

The Communist leadership has welcomed Mr. Obama’s reassurance that Washington will not seek to “contain” China. This, and the decision to boost exchanges of high-level military personnel, should minimize those nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse games that naval vessels and jet fighters from both sides have been playing in the South China Sea.

Moreover, the two leaders’ determination to enhance “positive, cooperative and comprehensive” ties has rendered it possible for Taiwan to recede into the background. For the first time since the 1972 Nixon visit, senior Chinese cadres said little about the “breakaway island” during the visit of an American president. President Hu did not even repeat the mantra that Washington should stop selling arms to Taiwan.

These positive aspects aside, the summit has reinforced the fact that China will use its clout to advance its agenda — not America’s. It is clearer than ever that for Beijing, strategic and business ties with its major allies come first.

Unfortunately for the Obama administration, this means that when it comes to cooperating to halt nuclear proliferation, the U.S. and its allies should not assume that Beijing will ever play hardball with either Pyongyang or Tehran.

A key reason why Mr. Obama has adopted a conciliatory stance toward Beijing — for example, snubbing the Dalai Lama last month — is that Washington hopes China will use its vast influence with North Korea and Iran to prod the two pariah states toward denuclearization.

This effort will fall short. Mr. Hu’s comments during the summit did not go beyond vague pledges to cooperate on proliferation. And Chinese state companies and military interests continue to expand their already extensive resource-oriented businesses in both countries.

Regarding trade and climate change, a newly confident Beijing displayed its determination to assume greater international responsibilities as long as this does not impinge on China’s domestic agenda of safeguarding economic growth at a rate of at least 8 percent.

And when it came to the economy explicitly, Mr. Hu refused to yield to American pressure to appreciate the renminbi, which has been pegged to the U.S. dollar for more than a year.

It is emblematic of the new power relations between the U.S. and China that while Mr. Obama had told the U.S. public last week that he would press Mr. Hu on the currency issue, the U.S. president chose not to publicize his disappointment upon being rebuffed by his host.

The lack of concrete achievements of the Obama visit — particularly Beijing’s enunciation of its somewhat China-centric approach to meeting global obligations — will perhaps convince the White House to drop illusions about what the China will do for the U.S. and the West, even after apparent concessions made by Washington.
Those who are most disappointed by the new global reality are probably Chinese human-rights activists, Tibetans and the Uighur ethnic minority in Xinjiang. Despite Mr. Obama’s soft approach to the human rights and Tibetan issues, Mr. Hu flatly refused to go along with Mr. Obama’s assertions that all countries should uphold the “universal rights” of every man and woman.

It is now beyond doubt that Beijing’s conception of its global responsibilities does not include enfranchising, let alone empowering, opposition groupings or ethnic minorities within China. Dozens of dissidents and NGO activists were detained or harassed by Chinese state-security agents in the run-up to the Obama visit.
After the American dignitaries are gone, these “enemies of the state” may become even more discouraged now that the Leader of the Free World has tacitly acknowledged that he can’t do much to tweak a dragon that has not only awakened but is spitting fire.