US-China heralded a new 'great power relationship'

China seeks ‘great power relationship’ with U.S. but warns against meddling in Tibet, Taiwan

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

China's Vice President Xi Jinping: “China welcomes the United States playing a constructive role in promoting the peace, stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region, and at the same time we hope the U.S. side will truly respect the interests and concerns of countries in the region, including China.”hare

By Chris Buckley and Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON – China’s Vice President Xi Jinping on Wednesday offered deeper co-operation with the United States on trade and hot spots like North Korea and Iran, but warned Washington to heed Beijing’s demands on Tibet, Taiwan and other contentious issues.

“Sino-U.S. relations stand at a new historic starting point,” China’s expected next leader told U.S. business groups after meetings on Tuesday with President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials.

China and the United States should strive to create “a new type of great power relationship for the 21st century,” Xi said.

But he said the two powers also had to “strive to avoid misunderstandings and avert misjudgments” and should “truly respect each other’s core interests and major concerns.”

Xi’s visit to United States this week presents a chance for him to boost his international standing before his expected promotion to head of China’s communist party later this year and president of the world’s most populous nation in 2013.

Even as Xi continued his U.S. visit, Obama, at a campaign-style stop in Milwaukee, took aim at China’s trade practices, saying he will not stand idly by when American’s competitors “don’t play by the rules.” “I directed my administration to create a Trade Enforcement Unit with one job: investigating unfair trade practices in countries like China,” Obama told factory workers.

Xi met with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Harry Reid on Wednesday morning and after his speech was headed to Iowa for the next leg of his trip, which finishes later this week in Los Angeles.

Xi addressed a number of sore spots in the U.S.-China relationship, including Beijing’s currency policy.

Many U.S. lawmakers complain the yuan is significantly undervalued, giving Chinese companies an unfair price advantage that helped lift the U.S. trade deficit with China to a record US$295.5-billion in 2011.

Xi said currency reforms already taken by Beijing helped boost U.S. exports to China to more than US$100-billion in 2011 and has significantly reduced China’s overall trade surplus.

“China has become the United States’ fastest growing export market,” Xi said. “The trade surplus as a proportion of GDP has been falling from over 7% to 2%, at a level internationally recognized as reasonable.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner acknowledged on Wednesday that Beijing is gradually letting its currency rise, but not fast enough to please the United States.

“We think they have some ways to go, we would like them to move more quickly,” he told a congressional panel.



SHARED CHALLENGES

Xi is poised to become China’s next leader following a decade in which it has risen to become the world’s second largest economy while the United States has fought two wars and endured the deepest and longest recession since the Great Depression that sapped its resources.

“The world is currently undergoing profound changes, and China and the United States face shared challenges and shared responsibilities in international affairs,” Xi said.

“We should further use bilateral and multilateral mechanisms to enhance coordination between China and the United States on hotspots, including developments on the Korean peninsula and the Iran nuclear issue,” he said.

At the same time, he urged Washington not to support movements in Taiwan and Tibet for independence.

China deems the self-ruled island of Taiwan to be an illegitimate breakaway from mainland rule since 1949, and has warned that the island must accept eventual reunification.

In recent years, tensions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have eased as economic flows have grown. But Beijing remains wary of U.S. involvement in the issue, which it calls an internal affair.

In early 2010, the Obama administrations decision to move forward with proposed arms sales to Taiwan triggered vehement criticism from Beijing, including warnings of sanctions against U.S. companies involved in the sales. Those warnings petered out, but Xi made clear that Taiwan remains an acute concern for Beijing’s dealings with Washington.

Tensions over Chinese control of Tibet have flared in past months when a succession of protests and self-immolations have exposed volatile discontent. Chinese officials have repeatedly blamed those tensions on separatists or supporters of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Buddhist leader of the region.

Xi also acknowledged the Obama administration’s recent “pivot” toward Asia, but warned it not to push too far.

“China welcomes the United States playing a constructive role in promoting the peace, stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region, and at the same time we hope the U.S. side will truly respect the interests and concerns of countries in the region, including China.”

© Thomson Reuters 2012

Xi sees new 'starting point' for US-China ties

By Andrew Beatty (AFP) 

WASHINGTON — Chinese heir apparent Xi Jinping heralded "a new historical starting point" for ties with the United States, wooing US business leaders with a glimpse of a more cooperative future.

Speaking during a lavish ballroom luncheon with the upper crust of corporate America, Vice President Xi described deeper Sino-American ties as an "unstoppable river that keeps surging ahead."

Glossing over the tumultuous twists and turns in 30 years of Cold War-dominated relations, Xi said interests had become ever-more intertwined. "It is a course that cannot be stopped or reversed," he said.

Xi welcomed Washington's interest in the Asia Pacific region, and said cooperation was needed on a range of challenges from North Korea to Iran, so long as China's interests are also respected.

Xi is on his maiden visit to the United States as a top official, a trip many hope will help close a chapter in relations characterized by mistrust and mudslinging, particularly in the commercial sphere.

As the tectonic plates of global trade have shifted in recent decades, China and the United States -- the world's two largest economies -- have frequently collided, jutted and bumped against each other, sometimes to damaging effect for both.

With Xi widely tipped to lead China from 2013 and Obama in a November re-election battle, the visit is being seen as a dress rehearsal for the next generation of US-China relations.

During the trip, Xi has worked US constituencies key to the bilateral ties: official Washington, corporate leaders and, in Iowa, a return to small-town America which he visited more than two decades ago.

His stops in Washington have included the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, Congress and the US-China Business Council.

Throughout his trip Xi has received the trappings of a state visit -- even if he is only head of state in waiting.

In a broad-ranging speech that was short on specifics Wednesday, Xi told business leaders that increased understanding, mutual respect for core interests, trade and cooperation in international affairs should form the basis for relations.

"Over the past 33 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the friendship between our two peoples has deepened, mutually beneficial cooperation has expanded and our interests have become increasingly interconnected," he said.

At the luncheon Xi was introduced by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger whose secret trip to China in 1971 paved the way for the normalization of relations between Washington and Beijing.

The pair were flanked by a cadre of Chinese Communist Party officials, as well as executives from Coca Cola, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Procter & Gamble and Estee Lauder.

Coca Cola CEO Muhtar Kent expressed the cautious optimism felt in the US business community about future ties with China.

He described Xi's visit as "another important milestone toward building an enduring and constructive relationship between our two nations."

The Chinese vice president largely steered clear of specific policy pronouncements, but stressed the mutual benefits of trade, pointing out that 47 of 50 US states had seen their exports with China grow in the last decade.

Despite deepening ties, many Americans and their lawmakers angrily accuse Beijing of not playing by the rules.

They accuse China of keeping the value of its currency unfairly low to fuel inexpensive exports, which have catalyzed China's headlong dash toward becoming an economic superpower.

From June 2010, Beijing has allowed the yuan to rise 8.5 percent against the dollar, in part because of domestic inflation pressures -- making the yuan an increasingly dubious scapegoat for lopsided trade.

In the last decade, trade between the two countries has increased over 275 percent and is now worth half a trillion dollars a year.

But Chinese exports still make up 80 percent of bilateral trade, despite China joining the World Trade Organization a decade ago, leading to accusations of protectionism from US industry.

Xi, repeating a long standing gripe, said the US would need to reform its own trade restrictions on exports to China in order to right that imbalance.

"It is very important for addressing the China-US trade imbalance that the United States adjusts its economic policies and structure, including removing various restrictions on exports to China, in particular easing control on civilian high-tech exports to China as soon as possible," he said.

China has often blamed the US deficit on Washington's own rules on exporting sensitive equipment that could be adapted for military or intelligence use.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved

China and the US: the princeling and the professor

Barack Obama should strive to create conditions in which Xi Jinping, the presumed next leader of China, can play reformer 

Editorial guardian.co.uk, 

If Russia is a country with an unpredictable past, spare a thought for Jia Juchuan, the historian entrusted with the official biography of the father of the next presumed leader of China, Xi Jinping. The story of Xi's father – a member of the first generation of Chinese revolutionary leaders – is a bear trap for the fifth. The elder Xi was both a pioneer of the People's Republic who rose to the rank of vice-premier and a victim of Mao's cultural revolution.

This was not without consequence for the son who may shortly inherit the leadership. Xi junior exchanged his gilded cage in Beijing for a cave home in the impoverished northwestern province of Shaanxi. The first volume of Xi the elder's life was published without problems, but the second volume, covering the purge, has been shelved for three years, ever since the son's destiny became clear. 
Everybody wants a hand in writing it, the historian complained to the Washington Post. If only China's collective leadership could have followed Churchill's advice to Stalin and Roosevelt.



Xi's own biography is a major political asset as the Chinese leader-in-waiting tours America this week on what everyone is taking to be a pre-coronation visit. It gives him the ability to be all things to all men. He is both the princeling confident and authoritative enough to speak his mind, and a man with first-hand experience of rural China. Xi is the modern entrepreneur, not only at ease with China's coastal wealth but the creator of much of it, especially in Shenzhen. And he can also present himself as the man of the people – frugal, down to earth, pragmatic, eating dressed-down in government canteens, a modern politician at home with big business but uncorrupted by it. Supporters of Tibet have scoured Xi Jinping's past for any signs of a shift away from Beijing's growing clampdown. Xi's father was an interlocutor for the Dalai Lama's special envoy Lodi Gyari. But these are straws in the wind. Read what Xi said in a speech celebrating the 60th anniversary of Tibet's "peaceful liberation" last year – that China should fight against separatist activities of the Dalai group and "completely destroy any attempt to undermine stability in Tibet and the national unity of the motherland". As the US ambassador candidly observed, Xi seems personable, but US officials "don't really know much about him".

Perhaps that is why Xi was given the red carpet treatment on Tuesday in Washington. His day included a stop at the Oval Office, lunch with the vice-president and the secretary of state, and a highly unusual visit to the Pentagon – all after a dinner with Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. Xi remains number two, and his succession – although heavily scripted, with all members of the standing committee of the politburo except Xi and Li Keqiang set to leave – is not yet complete. The choreography of Tuesday's events left little room for doubt. These were the two most important world leaders getting a sense of each other for the first time.

For an America that has consciously turned its diplomatic firepower away from Europe and the Middle East – the former in economic decline, the latter convulsed by revolution to which Washington is a bystander – the Asia Pacific region represents a more fruitful arena. Not only as the economic powerhouse of the world, but an area where US power projection is positively sought – by its traditional allies Japan, Australia and the Philippines, but also by lesser nations emerging from China's shadow. If China and America can deliver mutually assured economic destruction – as the holder of $2tn of US treasury and mortgage-backed debt, China would suffer disastrous capital losses if it spooked the markets – in military terms China and America are regional powers. What more important task than they understand each other's red lines?

Obama should not read too much into Xi's arrival. He should strive to create the conditions in which Xi could play the reformer. If not, the US might find that Xi is equally at home with a more traditional role.

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Singapore warns US on anti-China rhetoric!

By Shaun Tandon (AFP)

Suggestions on how to contain China's rise may spark reaction

WASHINGTON — Singapore urged the United States to be careful in comments on China, warning that suggestions of a strategy to contain the rising power could cause strife in Asia.

On a visit to Washington, Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam voiced confidence that the State Department accepted the need for cooperation with China but said that US domestic politics "resulted in some anti-China rhetoric."

Singaporean Foreign Minister and Minister for Law K. Shanmugam attends "The Singapore Conference" in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012. Shanmugam is currently visiting Washington to meet US policy makers. AFP PHOTO/JEWEL SAMAD

"We in Singapore understand that some of this is inevitable in an election year. But Americans should not underestimate the extent to which such rhetoric can spark reaction which can create a new and unintended reality for the region," he said.

Singapore is a close partner of Washington and home to a key US military logistical base.

But the city-state is highly dependent on trade and has sought smooth commercial relations with Asia's major economic powers such as China, Japan and India.

"It's quite untenable -- quite absurd -- to speak in terms of containment of China. That's a country with 1.3 billion people," Shanmugam told a conference on Singapore at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China "is determined to progress in all fields and take its rightful place in the community of nations. It will succeed in that venture," he said.



The United States, while looking to trim spending on its giant military to tame a soaring debt, has set a priority on Asia as rapid economic growth and the rise of China look set to reshape the region.

The US military has sought closer cooperation with the Philippines and Vietnam, which have accused China of increasingly bellicose actions to assert control over disputed territories in the South China Sea.

Shanmugam said that the United States should also look at other ways of engagement in Asia such as pressing ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an emerging trade pact that involves at least nine countries.

It is "a mistake to focus only on the US military presence in the region, to the exclusion of other dimensions of US policy," he said.

President Barack Obama's administration has repeatedly said that it welcomes the rise of China and will try to find areas for cooperation.

Vice President Joe Biden, ahead of a US visit by his counterpart Xi Jinping, called in a statement Wednesday for the two powers to work together on "practical issues."

Addressing the same conference as Shanmugam, senior US diplomat Kurt Campbell agreed it was "very important we're careful about our rhetoric" and said that the United States wanted a relationship with China "based on the well-being" of both countries.

"Every country in Asia right now wants a better relationship with China. That's natural and any American strategy in the region has to be based on that fundamental recognition," said Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia.

"It is also the case that every country in Asia, I believe, also wants a better relationship with the United States," he said.

Shanmugam did not cite examples of "anti-China" comments in the United States, but a number of US lawmakers have raised fears about Beijing's rise.

At a congressional hearing Tuesday, Representative Dana Rohrabacher called for the United States to ramp up support for the Philippines to help the democratic US ally assert its claims in maritime disputes with China.

"We need to stand as aggressively and as solidly with the Filipino government in their confronting an aggressive, arrogant China -- expansionist China -- as we have stood with them against radical Islam," said Rohrabacher, a Republican from California.

Economic disputes with China have also come to the forefront.

In a recent television commercial that outraged Asian American groups, Representative Pete Hoekstra -- a Republican seeking a Senate seat in Michigan -- attacked his opponent with an advertisement criticizing US debt to China.

In the advertisement, a young Asian woman -- in a setting that looked more like Vietnam than China -- said in broken English, "Your economy get very weak; ours get very good."