WHAT happens when a world leader with a sense of being a man of destiny goes to a foreign land that has the potential to be a global leader?
The answer sums up United States President Barack Obamas experiences in China during his state visit to that country in mid-November. His studied comments, interspersed with some candid observations, provide a partial answer. Obama and China are still coming to terms with each other. The evolving political chemistry between him and Chinese President Hu Jintao and also the latters colleagues reflects, for now, a reality of hope and confidence on both sides.
The unstated name of the political game between the U.S. and China is competitive coexistence. It goes beyond the other fashionable prescription in todays global politics: cooperation and competition between any two states or groups. Discernible in the montage of events during Obamas visit to China was the reality of a qualitatively new engagement, with each side hoping to influence the other decisively.
For Obama, the journey to China at this time, almost a political pilgrimage, was the central part, in more than just the ordinary sense, of an East Asia tour. Addressing American soldiers at the Osan Air Base in South Korea on November 20, he summed up his overall tour.
Speaking as the Commander-in-Chief of the finest military that the world has ever known, Obama said: Today, I am finishing my first visit to Asia as [U.S.] President. In Tokyo [on November 13], we renewed and deepened the U.S.-Japan alliance. In Singapore [on November 14 and 15], we worked with leaders from across the Asia Pacific [region] to strengthen the [current] global economic recovery. And, in China [from November 15 to November 19], we worked to advance the partnership between our two countries on global issues because cooperation between the United States and China will mean a safer, more prosperous world for all of us, including right here on the Korean peninsula. In Seoul, President Lee [Myung-bak of South Korea] and I reaffirmed the enduring alliance between our countries an alliance rooted in shared sacrifice, common values, mutual interest and mutual respect.
To draw up a firm foreign policy balance sheet for a voyage of much discovery and some diplomacy will be an exercise in romanticised politics. However, an American President, even a Nobel Peace laureate in his very first year in office, is not without a calculus of realpolitik and reality checks. This is so despite the increasing empirical evidence of a relative decline of American power on the global stage in the economic, political and military domains. And a major power that is increasingly exposing this relative decline of the U.S. is China.
Viewed in this perspective, what are the main pluses and minuses of Obamas first East Asian tour? The biggest plus is a new vibrancy in the U.S.-China dialogue and the parallel fact that he made no new enemies during this visit. Such recognition of a simple but profound development does not negate the impressions of a few independent observers that some of Obamas utterances in China might not have wafted across to its leaders as a sweet political tone.
The issue in focus here is one of his comments on the utility of the Internet in the present age of outer space and cyberspace. Paraphrased, the comment is simply an advocacy of freedom of thought and expression as not only the touchstone but also the catalyst of good governance in individual countries. Any such advocacy did not rattle the Chinese leaders during Obamas visit to Shanghai and Beijing.
On the minus side of Obamas tour diary which is inevitably composed by the commentators and not by the President himself no political or diplomatic breakthroughs were announced. Nor, on the positive side, was there any breakdown in Washingtons ties with Tokyo. This in itself is significant, considering that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama prefers a new paradigm of relations with the U.S. Much political spin is being placed on this new paradigm following Hatoyamas latest talks with Obama in Tokyo. But the more immediate doubts about the continuity of the U.S.-Japan alliance have been dissipated for now.
Obama is keen not to lose old allies such as Japan, South Korea and Australia even as he seeks a viable modus vivendi in ties with China. His talks with the Chinese leaders, Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao in particular, were inevitably centred on the big global and bilateral issues of the day. In fact, a constant refrain among U.S. officials was that Washingtons bilateral equation with Beijing had now gone global. More importantly, the U.S. planned for, and tends to believe that it has succeeded in opening, a new window of opportunity for the future. This new window is that of America being able to communicate directly with Chinas younger generation. For the White House, as an institution with its own sense of the future, Obamas latest dialogue with some Chinese students in Shanghai on November 16 is an investment in the future of ties between the two countries.
Obama is the first U.S. President from a household which, in his own words, looks like the United Nations a diverse racial and ethnic mix. He emphasised this, sparking good-natured laughter during his dialogue with future Chinese leaders at the Museum of Science and Technology in Shanghai. His multi-ethnic family background is complete with a Chinese stream from Canada. In a sense, therefore, his image as a truly globalised American President gave him unparalleled access to the minds and hearts of the young Chinese students who heard and questioned him. And, he did try to introduce them to universal ideas and values that would transcend the core beliefs of distinctive nations and civilisations. He was looking for a new meeting space with the young Chinese, even while remaining fully cognisant and respectful of Chinas Confucian and Communist systems.
Outwardly, Obama was eager to understand the sights and sounds of Shanghai and Beijing, apart from admiring the idea of the Great Wall of China. Beyond the obvious, though, his objective was to reach out to future Chinese leaders in the hope of catalysing the creation of a potential new constituency in China for the American political discourse. Surely, just one dialogue in Shanghai, somewhat modelled on a U.S. town-hall-style meeting, is insufficient for any such grand project of creating a new constituency inside China. However, the game plan is too transparent to be missed, regardless of the inherent limitations.
It is also not as if the Chinese leaders would have been unaware of any U.S. game plan, regardless of the packaging of the real objective. In the event, it suited the authorities of both the U.S. and China to test the mood of the Chinese students on some sensitive issues of international concern or interest. A sampling of Obamas session with the Chinese students will be illustrative of the U.S. game plan.
Some questions were directly posed to Obama by the students he handpicked, as it were, from among those in the hall who raised their hands to get a chance to quiz him. A few other questions were received through the Internet, which is said to be monitored by the Chinese authorities. Questions were also chosen from those received by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing through the Internet and, perhaps, even otherwise. This procedure was decided upon to get a reasonably credible mix of questions that the Chinese youth might want an American President to answer.
China is home to 350 million Internet users, the largest national figure of this kind in the world. A question, received by the U.S. Embassy and read out as such, was whether Obama was aware of the Internet firewall in China and whether the Chinese should be able to use Twitter freely. Obamas answer: I am a big believer in technology and I am a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas. It encourages creativity. And so, I have always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I am a big supporter of non-censorship.
Not done yet, Obama said: I recognise that different countries have different traditions. I should be honest. As President of the United States, there are times where I wish information did not flow so freely [in America] because then I would not have to listen to people criticising me all the time. ... But the truth is that because in the United States information is free that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I do not want to hear. The Internet has become an even more powerful tool for that kind of citizen participation.
On the downside of this equation between the state and the citizens in a democracy, Obama said: It also means that terrorists are able to organise on the Internet in ways that they might not have been able to do before. So, there is some price that you pay for openness. But I think that the good outweighs the bad so much that it is better to maintain that openness.
By any standard of international diplomacy, it was for Obama a dream access to the future Chinese leaders. They were also given a brief account of how the difficult U.S.-China ties of the early years of the Mao era turned dynamic in recent times. Recounted were such phases of this transformation as ping-pong diplomacy of table tennis matches between the two countries and various other direct political steps.
The novelty of Obamas dialogue with the students, while being an experiment in alternative diplomacy of wooing the next Chinese generation, did not overshadow the main agenda of his talks with the current leaders in Beijing. The official dialogue was extensive, the agenda covering diverse areas such as climate change, the early signs of global economic recovery, nuclear non-proliferation, and counter-terrorism.
In the absence of any specific new agreements, which in any case were not negotiated during Obamas visit, Hu Jintao said: China and the United States share extensive common interests and broad prospect for cooperation on a series of major issues important to mankinds peace and stability and development.
On Chinas core state-defining concerns, Obama said: We have reaffirmed our strong commitment to a one-China policy. We did note that while we recognise that Tibet is part of the Peoples Republic of China [PRC], the United States supports the early resumption of dialogue between the Chinese government and representatives of the Dalai Lama. We also applaud the steps that the PRC and Taiwan have already taken to relax tensions and build ties across the Taiwan Strait.
In effect, Obama conceded Chinas state sovereignty over such issues as Tibet and Taiwan. However, he tried to seize the initiative on the issue of peoples sovereignty by speaking directly to the Chinese students about the importance of holding governments to account in individual countries. In a context entirely different from Obamas latest visit to China, such a distinction between state sovereignty and peoples sovereignty has been brought into some focus by Martin Jacques. His treatise When China Rules the World: The rise of the Middle Kingdom and the end of the Western World has already set off a debate. A China expert like John Ikenberry is of the view that it remains to be seen whether China can build a Pax Sinica without an open, rule-based world order under Beijings vision of the future.
Obamas East Asia tour was essentially about his countrys links with that region and the wider forum of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). However, official India felt compelled to react to a comment by him while in Beijing. As part of what was dubbed as a joint (U.S.-China) press statement, Obama said on November 17 that we agreed to cooperate more on meeting this [counter-terrorism] goal [with reference to Afghanistan and Pakistan], including bringing about more stable, peaceful relations in all of South Asia.
As this is written, Indian officials are reported to be satisfied that China has no intention of playing a role in the resolution of any India-Pakistan dispute. Interestingly, it was not for the first time that the U.S. and China expressed interest in the stability of South Asia as part of the discussions on global issues. Exactly 10 years ago, U.S. President Bill Clinton and Chinese leader Jiang Zemin had put South Asia on their agenda of discussions.
Another issue of interest to India figured in Obamas joint statement with Hatoyama on a world without nuclear weapons. Issuing the statement in Tokyo on November 13, the two leaders agreed to explore ways to enhance a new [global] framework for civil nuclear cooperation without increasing the risks of proliferation of atomic weapons. If pursued, such an objective might saddle India with a new diplomatic challenge on matters relating to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). A relevant issue is whether a new global framework for civil nuclear cooperation would annul or alter the existing terms on which India has secured access to the international civil nuclear energy market under NSG auspices.
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