CHINA IS the focal point of President Obama’s trip to Asia for a good reason. It’s the best opportunity for the new president to utilize his skills in statecraft to push a relationship beset by mistrust in a more positive direction.
Obama’s encounters with China’s leaders and his exposure to the Chinese public must be geared toward preventing the US-China relationship from degenerating into astrategic rivalry.
Such an outcome won’t be inevitable if Obama can convince China’s leaders and people that they need not fear containment by, or conflict with, the United States. If this message is delivered persuasively, Obama will be in a stronger position to ask for Chinese cooperation on other issues of mutual interest. These include the capping of carbon emissions, the prevention of nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran, and a long-sought “rebalancing’’ of the US and Chinese economies so that there will be more consumer spending in China while Americans save, innovate, and build more products for export.
China has been trying to insulate itself against expected opposition from America and its allies. To reduce its vulnerability as a nation with limited natural resources, China has been investing in oil fields, pipelines, and metals mines around the world. The Chinese have been building strategically located port facilities in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Pakistan. And they have been expanding their naval power significantly.
These are braided strands of a strategy to protect China in the event that an enemy seeks to block sea lanes at key choke points and cut off China’s energy imports. To counter this geopolitical anxiety, Obama should point out that far from threatening China, the US military presence in Japan and South Korea has enhanced regional security, freeing resources for China’s economic expansion.
Above all, Obama should stress that a Chinese military build-up will usher in precisely the outcome Beijing wants to avoid: a destabilizing arms race in Asia. America’s national interest - like China’s - lies with the peaceful ascendance of a self-confident China that competes in the 21st-century global marketplace, not in a great-power conflict with either the United States or India.
None of this means that Obama needs to be silent about China’s human rights abuses or refusal to allow cultural autonomy in Tibet. But above all he must use his presidential megaphone to hammer home a key point: that America and China, far from being fated to be enemies, are destined to be friends and partners.
