Calum MacLeod
USA Today
September 7, 2012
Four years of diplomatic meetings, personal visits and a state dinner at the White House have not altered China policy substantially toward the United States and its allies, some experts here say.The United States has not gotten China to end its alleged currency manipulation or secured its help on the United Nations Security Council to isolate Iran. And the Chinese have boosted demands that U.S. allies in Asia bend to its territorial demands on the South China Sea despite U.S. appeals for all sides to agree.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton completed talks Wednesday with her counterparts here and repeated her belief that the two countries seek “a new answer to the question of what happens when an established power and a rising power meet.”
“There is a huge amount going on where the United States and China need to consult,” Clinton said Thursday, mentioning Iran, North Korea, Syria and the global economy. “We can explore the toughest issues without imperiling the whole relationship.”
China has bedeviled numerous U.S. administrations that have tried to influence its behavior without sparking conflict. Clinton’s visit was her fifth since 2009, and follows 12 meetings between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, including an official dinner in 2011 in Washington.
She insisted Thursday that the United States is standing up for its interests in Asia. But critics say Obama has failed to stop China from keeping its currency artificially low, which depresses job creation in the USA by making it cheaper for Americans to buy Chinese-made products. They say he has done little about China’s military buildup, threats against neighbors and poor human rights record.
“U.S.-China policy has become something of a cold peace, far warmer than a cold war, due to economic interests, but in a number of areas, we and the Chinese are at fundamental loggerheads,” says Dean Cheng, an Asia research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.
Obama began his term hoping to work with China on currency, climate change and limiting nuclear proliferation, “but all three have come a cropper,” Cheng says. At the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, China refused to reduce emissions. Despite entreaties from the White House, Beijing has been reluctant to challenge North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs.
The administration’s announced strategic “pivot” to Asia from 2011 has resulted in a “policy collision” with “an increasingly assertive China,” Cheng says.
Yan Xuetong, a U.S.-China scholar at Qinghua University in Beijing, says the attempt to contain or isolate China has angered many Chinese.
Other experts say Obama deserves high marks for his handling of China. Obama’s administration has encouraged China’s increasing voice in multilateral organizations but held China to account when it appears to subvert established norms, says Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. think tank.
Lack of real co-operation on tough issues, and global concerns over China’s growing economic and military power forced U.S. policy in Asia to shift from placing China as the centerpiece to become “equal parts engaging with China and hedging with allies,” Economy says. Given that every aspect of China’s own policy is in constant transition, the administration “can do no better than to remain firm in its pursuing its priorities while remaining flexible in addressing changing Chinese interests, policies and capabilities.”
The Obama administration “has made some progress on identifying what the real game-changing issues are in the U.S.-China economic relationship but has found it very hard to get traction on achieving anything significant and has been preoccupied with stopping things from getting worse,” says Patrick Chovanec, an American professor of business at Qinghua University in Beijing.
China’s trade surplus globally has declined, but the surplus with the USA has not. Many markets in China remain effectively closed to American companies, and counterfeiting remains rampant, he says.
U.S. currency policy toward China has been “pretty good” in recent years, counters Andrew Batson, research director at GK Dragonomics, an economic research firm in Beijing.
“It’s not realistic to have high expectations that American politicians can completely change how the Chinese government does business,” he says.
On human rights, Obama stressed engagement with Beijing and quiet diplomacy, says Joshua Rosenzweig, an independent human rights researcher based in Hong Kong.
“In retrospect, I think not even they feel it was a successful policy,” Rosenzweig says.
As Clinton found this week in her Asia trip, allies of the United States such as the Philippines living in China’s shadow are increasingly worried about its aggressive posture. The United States has pledged to defend Taiwan from military attack, but Obama has declined to sell to Taiwan U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to defend itself, a sale China has demanded not go through. The administration said early on that its approach to China was to foster the rise of a responsible great power, willing to contribute more to global security and prosperity. Some say such diplomacy will not work.
“It’s something of a pipe dream that China should pursue a policy that is in accord with Western interests,” says Heritage’s Cheng. “There are philosophical and fundamental differences of interest.”
