WHILE US defence secretary Robert Gates visited Beijing last week on a trip to ease strained military ties, to his surprise and that, it seemed, of some of his hosts, China brazenly tested a new stealth fighter jet. Whether or not a deliberate provocation, the test was eloquent testimony to China’s new diplomatic assertiveness on the eve of President Hu Jintao’s important four-day visit to Washington.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton last week described relations as at a crucial juncture, and the visit is seen by former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski as “the most important top-level US-China encounter since Deng Xiaoping’s historic trip more than 30 years ago”. It is not an easy time, however.
Within the US there has been a significant reappraisal of the conventional wisdom that China’s growth and the increasing enmeshing of the two economies need not be at the expense of the US or its global reach. Both, it was argued, could get rich together in a non-adversarial win-win relationship. But anger at Chinese exchange rate manipulation and its “theft” of US jobs, its refusal to rein in North Korea, differences on Iran, Taiwan, climate change, and fast-growing military investment, has crystallised in a vocal conservative backlash. President Obama is said to be a soft touch, not least on human rights. There is talk of congressional action on the €200 billion US-China trade deficit. A benign view has soured.
For his part, the president has also toughened his stance, making clear that he won’t stand by while China tries to bully its neighbours. The US has embraced India and southeast Asia more closely and shored up alliances with South Korea and Japan.
For the Chinese, historian Francis Fukuyama argues, the context and tone of the visit also reflect growing self-confidence – they see, he writes, “their weathering of the financial crisis as a vindication of their own system and the beginning of an era in which US-style liberal ideas will no longer be dominant”.
Hu, like Obama, is a pragmatist, keen to promote a co-operative relationship, and he warned before his trip of the danger for both of a “zero sum cold war mentality”. He insists China is moving towards a more flexible exchange rate policy, the most immediate bone of contention. No doubt the trip will also be sugared by some lucrative business deals. But China shows no sign of rolling over on key political/regional differences with the US. We may see a rapprochement but a qualitative shift in the relationship appears unlikely.