China-U.S. Relations 'Critical' Ahead Of Hu Jintao's Washington Visit

With the international media abuzz with rumors just days before Chinese President Hu Jintao touches down in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed calls for a Cold War-style containment policy and instead noted the U.S. sought a "positive, cooperative and comprehensive" relationship with China.

As the AFP is reporting, Clinton's Friday speech indicated human rights -- particularly in the wake of jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo's historic Nobel Peace Prize win -- to be a topic of priority during Jintao's visit, scheduled for Jan. 18-21. "A vibrant civil society would help address some of China's most pressing issues, from food safety to pollution to education to health care," Clinton is quoted as saying. "The longer China represses freedoms, the longer it will miss out on these opportunities and the longer that Liu Xiaobo's empty chair in Oslo will remain a symbol of a great nation's unrealized potential and unfulfilled promise."

Washington is reportedly hoping for progress on other fronts, too -- including climate change to the ongoing Sudan referendum. As Bonnie S. Glaser, a former consultant for the Department of Defense and the State Department and now chair of the China program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells the Washington Post:

At the global level, the United States seeks greater Chinese cooperation in countering proliferation of nuclear weapons, reducing imbalances in the global economy, and combating climate change. Regional issues include preventing further North Korean provocations, promoting regional security cooperation in the East Asia Summit, and ensuring that the results of the referendum on southern Sudan are accepted by Sudan and the international community and that the 2005 peace agreement is fully implemented. Bilateral issues that will be raised by the U.S. side include human rights, trade, and the U.S.-China military relationship. The Obama administration would like some concrete deliverables to demonstrate to the American public that the president's policy is effective and producing results.

Douglas H. Paal, a former unofficial U.S. representative to Taiwan and now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted a more lasting outcome of Hu's state visit -- scheduled to be his last as president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, before he steps down in 2012 -- may lay even further ahead:

While results so far are on the whole good, perhaps the trickier part of the process is to make it survive the weeks after the summit. Past experience in times of constructive relations suggests the best method going forward is to engage a broader swath of the Chinese and American elites in a full agenda of exchanges. An important outcome of the summit, therefore, would be instructions from the two leaders for their colleagues to continue the process. An exchange of visits by Chinese Vice President and heir-apparent Xi Jinping and Vice President Joe Biden would be the first place to start.

Comments

[phute]

05:27 AM on 01/18/2011

Hillary - how does it feel to be somewhere that's just too big to bully?
And all that power that you just love so much - not worth much in China eh?

[maxtruthful]

10:05 PM on 01/17/2011

American's & Europeans want China to step up to the plate & act in a responsible manner.

[woodnwire]

02:58 PM on 01/17/2011

if you spin an oriental around in circles, does he become disorientated ?

[Eric Burke]

09:55 AM on 01/17/2011

Pucker up Hilary!

[duxguts]

10:29 PM on 01/16/2011

Hillary, tell him that if he doesn't do something about the abysmal state of human rights in China you'll have him thrown into Gitmo.

[Eric Burke]

09:58 AM on 01/17/2011

That would go down smoothly lol

[mike72]

11:33 AM on 01/17/2011

It is tongue-in-cheek irony from duxguts. :)

[tvenana]

12:10 AM on 01/18/2011

It's none of your business. go and fix your economy first, that'd be good for you.

[Peter Noble 2]

02:05 PM on 01/16/2011

So we punish Iran for wanting to be like China, oh and doing biz with China. We punish Iran for hating Israel? We have threatened to nuke Iran! We support Israel and the support Hezbollah. We are just as guilty as Iran of meddling and supporting the very worst.
Yet Iran steals no jobs from America. China HAS ALL OUR JOBS!

China is always favored regardless of who controls Congress and the White House. The Chinese jail citizens, torture dissidents and we merely mutter criticism and allow the abuse to continue. Why? Because Corporate America demands we allow them to ship jobs abroad.

While we are bankrupting ourselves fighting peasants armed with AK47s, they are building advance fighter jets, satellite killing missiles. Drones will not be effective against China. Seen how advanced their military has become? Their Submarine fleet could take us out at anytime. There is war coming and we will be defeated BUT Corporate America will still do business with China. Who knows if they have put a kill switch on our computers?

Apple will employ ONE MILLION Chines indentured slaves to make just the iPhone. Why not real jobs here? Corporate America COULD pay a living wage and still make profits. China is all about Corporate greed. Over their they have indentured slaves.

Worse still: China holds most of our debt. They can kill us in many ways without having to slaughter us. We have preemptively surrendered.

Does it take an American Socialist to see this?

[tvenana]

12:06 AM on 01/18/2011

the truth is you Americans are not that competitive,no one can steal your jobs if you're competitive, that's the rule of business, you're just not willing to admit the fact. and pls stop whining.

[sposton]

12:40 PM on 01/16/2011

Read this:

"Compensating for Decline: Revitalizing US Asia-Pacific Hegemony" by Joseph Gerson

http://www.truth-out.org/compensating-decline-revitalizing-us-asia-pacific-hegemony66397

[mike72]

11:35 AM on 01/17/2011

Stir up tension in East Asia, disrupte the momentum of the forming of Asia Union, and thus keep American in the loop and in the commanding position.

As simple as that. The rest is just smoke.

[sposton]

12:29 PM on 01/17/2011

Exactly right.

[mike72]

11:44 AM on 01/17/2011

For most of 2010, US was on the offensive, coming up events one after another. By Novembmer, everyone believes US has won. It is at:

US 1 : China 0

yet, the sudden arrival of Chinese stealth jet figther J20 completely changed the game. It is the directly challenge to the concept of US ABSOLUTE AIR POWER. China played the hand extremly skillful, making it a forced hand by US instead of its own bidding.

It is now

US 1 : China 0.5

And the momentum of political and military IMPLICATION of J20 will play out in most of 2011 and beyond.

[Domo Tronic]

12:36 PM on 01/16/2011

Media aka this story can say what it wants. But the real story is they're meeting. Something Bushwacker didn't do and basically alienated US and A to one of their biggest... allies.

[uneeda]

12:16 PM on 01/16/2011

now the begging begins anew

[Wendy Davis]

12:06 PM on 01/16/2011

 
 
 
As a result of China’s very low fertility over the past two decades, the abundance of young, inexpensive labor is soon to be history. The number of workers aged 20 to 29 will stay about the same for the next few years, but a precipitous drop will begin in the middle of the coming decade. Over a 10-year period, between 2016 and 2026, the size of the population in this age range will be reduced by about one-quarter, to 150 million from 200 million. For Chinese aged 20 to 24, that decline will come sooner and will be more drastic: Over the next decade, their number will be reduced by nearly 50 percent, to 68 million from 125 million.
Such a drastic decline in the young labor force will usher in, for the first time in recent Chinese history, successive shrinking cohorts of labor force entrants. It will also have profound consequences for labor productivity, since the youngest workers are the most recently educated and the most innovative.
 
What makes China unique, however, is that it still has a state policy, unique in human history, that restricts the majority of Chinese families to one child per couple. At the time the policy was announced 30 years ago, it provoked great controversy both within and outside China; over the years it has extracted great sacrifices from Chinese families and individuals, especially from women.
 
And although the policy was designed as an emergency measure to slow down China’s population growth, and was intended to last for only one generation, the government has not yet shown the willingness, or courage, to phase it out.
 
China’s slow recognition and inaction in the face of its impending demographic crisis—inaction that persists despite appeals by almost all the country’s population experts to phase out the one child policy quickly—reflect policy makers’ lack of understanding of the changing demographic reality. Inertia also results from the resistance of the country’s birth-control bureaucracy, which formally employs half a million people.
This exemplifies a characteristic feature of China’s regime—relegating difficult, long-term, structural challenges to the back burner, while giving priority to short-term crisis management and concerns about stability. The looming demographic crisis will largely define China in the twenty-first century. Given that demographic changes take time to develop, and that their ramifications are not only massive but also long-lasting, China’s inaction has already proved costly—and will only grow more so the longer it persists.
 
http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/09_china_population_wang.aspx

[Wendy Davis]

12:04 PM on 01/16/2011

As a result of China’s very low fertility over the past two decades, the abundance of young, inexpensive labor is soon to be history. The number of workers aged 20 to 29 will stay about the same for the next few years, but a precipitous drop will begin in the middle of the coming decade. Over a 10-year period, between 2016 and 2026, the size of the population in this age range will be reduced by about one-quarter, to 150 million from 200 million. For Chinese aged 20 to 24, that decline will come sooner and will be more drastic: Over the next decade, their number will be reduced by nearly 50 percent, to 68 million from 125 million.
 
Such a drastic decline in the young labor force will usher in, for the first time in recent Chinese history, successive shrinking cohorts of labor force entrants. It will also have profound consequences for labor productivity, since the youngest workers are the most recently educated and the most innovative.
 
 And because China is a major player in the global economy, the impact of the country’s demographic changes will not be limited by its borders.
 
What makes China unique, however, is that it still has a state policy, unique in human history, that restricts the majority of Chinese families to one child per couple. At the time the policy was announced 30 years ago, it provoked great controversy both within and outside China; over the years it has extracted great sacrifices from Chinese families and individuals, especially from women. And although the policy was designed as an emergency measure to slow down China’s population growth, and was intended to last for only one generation, the government has not yet shown the willingness, or courage, to phase it out.
 
China’s slow recognition and inaction in the face of its impending demographic crisis—inaction that persists despite appeals by almost all the country’s population experts to phase out the one child policy quickly—reflect policy makers’ lack of understanding of the changing demographic reality. Inertia also results from the resistance of the country’s birth-control bureaucracy, which formally employs half a million people.
 
This exemplifies a characteristic feature of China’s regime—relegating difficult, long-term, structural challenges to the back burner, while giving priority to short-term crisis management and concerns about stability. The looming demographic crisis will largely define China in the twenty-first century. Given that demographic changes take time to develop, and that their ramifications are not only massive but also long-lasting, China’s inaction has already proved costly—and will only grow more so the longer it persists.
 
http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/09_china_population_wang.aspx

[mike72]

06:40 PM on 01/16/2011

1) over the next 10 or 20 years, China will be focusing more on precision manufacturing and less on labor intensive works like toys and textile. The toll of pollution on the environment will not allow it to continue its enviornmentally "murderous" industrial practice.

2) There are already policies coming out or are already in practice to allow families to have second child.

3) As One-Child policy is artificially imposed by the government on the society, it can be easily repeal when the government realizes the negative impact of such policy. At this point in time and history, the One-Child policy serves the fundamental purpose of ensuring the achievable goal of Chinese families and individuals elevated to a "well-off" living condition in 2020.

4) Have faith in Chinese government. It seems it knows what it is doing with long term planning.

[xtiangodloki]

10:56 AM on 01/17/2011

The issues here are valid, though the predictions are still inconclusive. Developed Asian nations such as Japan are having issues with aging population as well. Nations such as India which don't have this problem but instead have to deal with young people who don't have jobs and the growing masses of poor. Either way it's not pretty as countries have to balance the average quality of its citizens and growth prospects. The US is not doing much better either. At the current rate, social security and medicare will eventually bankrupt the country. You can't raise the benefit age by much higher because companies won't hire old people.

The fact is that we have population growth in a world of limited resources. The only answer to this is to expand into space.

[mike72]

12:00 PM on 01/17/2011

Or we need to fundamentally repeal the concept of "old people"

Realistically, with the medical advancement, the concept of "old" is no longer the same as when social security first introduced. Nowaday, being 50 or even 60 is not old but just matured. And living up to 85 and even 100 is quite normal.

So retring at the age of 80 is not too strange a concept AS LONG AS the society and companies buy into it. With this reset of the mind (it is actually just the mindset), the availability of labor pool will be fundamentally changed.

[mike72]

12:01 PM on 01/17/2011

Thus another observation: the nations who have a stronger medical program and a healthier society will come up on top eventually.

This might be the strongest argument for universal health coverage.

:)

[theseusofaustralia]

10:11 AM on 01/16/2011

Americans are just jealous of china, a rising power whilst they are racing to the bottom along with the arrogant british who still pretend they are an empire, when really they are just an aircraft carrier.

[PersonFromEarth]

11:04 AM on 01/16/2011

Funny Americans wouldbe jealous of China: They're economy is 4 times as big as theirs, their economy is the strongest in the world, their cultures imitidated and seen by practically everybody in the world. And not to mention, they're lightyears ahead China in terms of race relations (case in point: 3 secretaries in Obama's administration are of Asian descent)

[DAE]

05:25 PM on 01/16/2011

We're light years ahead of China in terms of race relations? I guess so. There are no black or white Chinese in their government. Makes a lot of sense. NOT.

[mike72]

11:35 AM on 01/16/2011

Chinese are jealous of Americans too. Americans can just print money and suck in the physical resources and hard labors from the rest of the world.

It is a better deal than making your people work nonstop, pollute all the rivers, deplete all your resource, and at the end, getting the ungrateful "nah nah cheap cheap stuff" respond from people who CONTINUES consuming on these "nah nah cheap cheap stuff".

[PersonFromEarth]

11:47 AM on 01/16/2011

Awww so that's what it is. The Americans are so clever that they're killing two birds with one stone: boosting their economy while polluting the environment and depleting the resources of the country to which they've outsourced their companies, thereby killing any possibility of a challenge to their global hegemony.

Looks like the Americans have mastered the art of war. And Sun Tzu wasn't even American!

[phute]

12:18 PM on 01/16/2011

Yeah - real jealous of the wholesale export of US manufacturing capacity - straight into their laps. Those US CEOs!

[USCOASTGUARDVET]

08:44 AM on 01/16/2011

Read the book " The Art of War" China is a big Dragon, and had been waiting patiently for their long a waited plan to rule the world.

[mike72]

09:21 AM on 01/16/2011

They were ruling the world for millenniums until a minor group of barbarian people going by the name of Anglos, Saxxons and Franks came onto the world stage around 500 years with a disruptive k*iller app call "gun".

:)

[PersonFromEarth]

09:32 AM on 01/16/2011

Funny how you call Anglos, Saxxons and Franks barbarian people. If they are barbarian people, then are 15 million non-barbarians living in the barbarian land of the USA?

HMMMM???

[mike72]

09:25 AM on 01/16/2011

Don't forget, the massive sea exploration 500 years lead by Columbus and others was a multi-national, generation long efforts to bypass the Arabs middle men to reach the origin of the silk road, China. So they can trade directly with the Chinese instead of getting a shocking price tag from the Arabs.

But the Arabs were too strong so they went the other way around the world, hitting North America and thought they had landed the mid-point of Silk Road, India.

The rest is history.

[Ohene]

06:42 AM on 01/16/2011

American must not allow China to push her around. China is what she is today because of American economic aid, directly or indirectly. Without the support of America, which began during the reign of Nixon, China would be no where. China MUST be made to RESPECT HUMAN RIGHTS. She has no immunity-privileges.

[theseusofaustralia]

10:14 AM on 01/16/2011

same could be said about the british american connection. without the british empire, america would never of developed into a thriving colony.

[PersonFromEarth]

10:58 AM on 01/16/2011

Uh no, it was precisely because there wasn't the British Empire that America developed into a thriving colony. That's why there was the war of independence.

But of course it's not like a Mao-loving Australian would know anything about American history. Even though you're moaning about the states on an American-based website.

Loving the irony though

[theseusofaustralia]

10:15 AM on 01/16/2011

also you forget america doesnt respect human right either, nor democracy. hypocritics.

[PersonFromEarth]

10:59 AM on 01/16/2011

if America doesn't respect human rights, I'm not sure how low the chances are that China does is.

[ElBruce]

04:47 AM on 01/16/2011

Some of the WikiLeaks cables point out that the Dalai Lama has been pressing the international community to do something about global warming. Reason? The Tibetan plateau is seeing 30% increases in temperature. And the Tibetan plateau feeds almost half of China's water table.

Being a hydrology engineer by profession, Hu Jintao must be more aware than most of the dangers threatening his nation because of this effect. And yet, we have yet to hear him take a stand on this issue.

[theseusofaustralia]

10:16 AM on 01/16/2011

The us admits there is a problem and chooses to do nothing about it either.

[PersonFromEarth]

10:58 AM on 01/16/2011

Actually it does: that's why it granted the Dalai Lama the Presidential Medal of Freedom award