The China-U.S. Dialogue

America wants a solution to the economic crisis. On a secondary level, civil rights and climate change as well.

For China, the victory of Barack Obama for the presidency of the United States was an easy cause for relief. In spite of Obama’s protectionist discourse, the Chinese leaders have believed that he was less ideological and less hostile towards them than his Republican rival, John McCain, who always had a hawkish attitude towards them.

Once Obama was positioned in the White House, however, Beijing began to have less certainty about the policies of the new administration with respect to China. His nomination of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State, in particular, was not considered to be a so-called “pro-Chinese” decision. Chinese sources openly declared their fear that Hillary Clinton could give greater weight to human rights and to the Tibet question than the Bush administration who rarely touched on these themes in his relations with China. The new Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, irritated Beijing when he accused China of “currency manipulations,” alluding to the Chinese policy that maintains its own currency depreciation.

Beijing’s worries with regards to Obama, we are now discovering, were not necessary: the new American president has demonstrated the fact of having a kind of agility and a diplomatic shrewdness that his predecessor George W. Bush was entirely incapable of. After the critical allusion of Geithner about “currency manipulations,” Obama called the Chinese President Hu Jintao and was able to iron out the situation. In fact, together with Hillary, he chose Asia for her inaugural diplomatic mission.

Before Hillary Clinton left for her diplomatic tour in Asia, which covered four countries, beginning in Japan and ending in China, there were many conjectures and hypotheses: people were asking themselves, for example, if they would deal with the most pressing issues in the relations between the U.S. and China, such as the huge American commercial deficit to China, the violations of human rights, and Tibet. Activists who are fighting for human rights hoped that Hillary Clinton would have seconded the success of her well appreciated speech on human rights that was given in Beijing in 1995, during an international conference on women’s rights.

Now, those activists must feel upset and disappointed: once she arrived in Beijing, Hillary Clinton almost made no reference to human rights or to the current Chinese currency policy, but underlined the operating fields in which the U.S. and China could collaborate, such as climate change and the global economic crisis in progress. Although she admitted that the Chinese precedents on the issue of human rights are still very controversial and questionable, the American Secretary of State also reiterated that this problem would not prevent the United States from seeking the support of Beijing to together face other global problems and challenges that are apparently more urgent.

Certainly the visit of Hillary Clinton to China did not lead to “contractual commitments,” in technical political jargon, “effective agreements.” In any case, she must have greatly put at ease the Chinese leadership with regards to Obama. In particular, the new American administration seems to know very well how to divide into watertight compartments the complex Chinese-American relations, keeping very distinct from each other the issues of strong dissent from those where there is the possibility of cooperation. What is even more important is that Washington has decided to prevent bilateral controversies from impeding China’s effective involvement in the realm of crucial issues that are deeply at heart to American national interests, such as economic recovery, climate change, and nuclear non-proliferation.

Such pragmatism is undoubtedly reassuring not only for the Chinese, but for the whole world. After having heard for eight years the slogan “You are either with us or against us,” the international community has good reason to celebrate the return of common sense to Washington. The real challenge for the pragmatic policy of Obama in China, however, consists of understanding if it will have the possibility of succeeding or not. For the moment, Beijing has not made any concessions, neither in terms of climate change, nor in currency policy. Naturally, something more than a visit by Hillary Clinton will be necessary – however strong-willed and fascinating she may be – before the Obama policy in China can bear fruit.