China – USA: 1-1

“The Most Powerful Two People in the World Shake Hands,” “Meeting of the Giants,” “Washington And Beijing Meet On the Red Carpet,” “The World Between East And West,” “From Bi-Polarity To Bi-Axial;” all these headlines and possibly many others even more penetrating could encompass the comments regarding the official state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to the U.S. and with U.S. President Barack Obama. Despite the temptation, the major newspapers, both in the U.S. and Europe, are more diplomatic. It is as if the comments would influence a game, where the final score has still not yet appeared on the scoreboard!

Why a game? Without a doubt, because the relationship evolving between the United States and China is one that remains below the characteristics of competition. A “game” assumes clear rules, stakes and possibly a double-cross between you and your enemy. What happened, then, in Washington outside the limelight and the “ballet” of official ceremonies?

Press statements tell us that the two leaders concentrated their conversations on the thorny issues of bilateral relations. From the American perspective, the dominant theme would have been the “democratic deficit,” easily found in the political system of the People’s Republic of China, especially regarding the degree of affirmation and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms — with an emphasis on freedom of information, freedom of expression and freedom of association. Also from the American perspective, the second theme would have been tied to the giant deficit which the U.S. continues to accumulate in commercial relations with China and the appropriate remedies to be administered. Jokingly, but also more seriously, this is important after the colorful statements from the former Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi: from $5 million a year China has reached $5 million a week! The United States maintains that the situation reflects the powerfully distorted balance in commercial relations, and the negative results, of gigantic proportions, is due to the fact that the central bank of China “plays with the screwdriver” at will and through its interests in that equation, giving the yuan its purchasing power.

From China’s perspective, the most important problem appears to be “setting the rules” for the continuation of competition and cooperation between the two poles of power in the “new world order” about to be born. China has become, in less than a decade, the largest dollar reserve owner in the world; the value of their holdings has surpassed the threshold of $3 trillion! China holds more than a quarter of the external debt of the United States. All these harsh realities, which are very inconvenient for Washington, were reviewed with great attention in Beijing, at least by the experts in the economy, even political ones. The converging result of the reviews, somewhat surprising for the simplistic logic that the political observers are accustomed to, is that China has absorbed a greater degree of dependence on the development of the United States. Therefore, China is interested to the highest degree to define, together with their partner in competition, the rules of management, through cooperation, of the problems that have become equally concerning for the U.S. and for China as well, which have major impact on the global economic dynamics!

The second objective of the Chinese presidential delegation appears to be one that apparently holds rather imponderable — the acceptance from their American partner of the idea — the reality — that not all good democratic solutions as sanctified by the “American way of life” are good for China; that there exists many more paths that takes one to towards this goal, and the selection of the solution is a task exclusively for the Chinese leaders. In other words, American politicians need to understand, in the interest of developing relations and partnering with China, that the great power of the East is not disposed to embrace a formula, whatever that may be, of “prescribed democracy.” Even if they don’t reject many of the democratic solutions used by modern democracies in governance, the integration of them in the Chinese system will be a recipe that will developed in Beijing, not in Washington or in any other capital in the world. The rationale behind this “teaching” approach, not threatening, but more capable in arousing the most basic worries, is that neither China nor the United States can allow the current conditions of the global economy and politics to majorly slip, or worse, result in a failure of governance in China; such as the kind experienced by Russia for example, even with its embrace of “the ideal model of democracy!”

With the signs that could be read on the faces of the two leaders, we conclude that the score of the meeting was tied; and each one of them can turn and face their “public selves” and declare that not only that they have not lost, but they have laid the groundwork for much better future developments.