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Showing posts with label US President Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US President Barack Obama. Show all posts

Sunday 27 September 2015

Towards closer ties between China and US

Win-win By Luo Jie

President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States may mean vastly improved China-US relations, with key agreements signed ahead to mark the occasion.



IF timing is a significant factor in shaping important events, what has it done to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States?

That the visit came at the same time as the first-ever papal address to the US Congress meant that media attention was effectively halved. Xi and Pope Francis had to share the media blitz; prime-time and front-page priorities were split.

But while the Pope’s visit was imbued with spirituality, Xi’s was rich in material significance and consequence. The Xi-Obama huddle was a meeting between leaders of the world’s two largest economies with much to discuss on economic and security matters.

More significantly, the Chinese leader, who is still in the early years of his decade in office, has come to visit his US counterpart in the twilight of the latter’s tenure. Yet China’s state media have no qualms about calling the visit “historic”.

President Barack Obama leaves office in January 2017. Although that is still more than a year away, it takes time for two distant yet interrelated, lumbering giants – China and the United States – to size each other up to work effectively together.

Not that Xi and Obama are total strangers. They have met repeatedly since 2009, some of those times only incidentally “on the sidelines” of a larger conference.

Still, much is assumed about the decisive nature of personal rapport between leaders. What impact does it have on bilateral relations between nations?

Western societies generally prefer formal agreements such as treaties to benchmark external relations.

For Asian countries such as China, unilateral pledges work as well and their voluntary observance deserves plaudits.

But Asian cultures also value personal connections, such that know-who is at least as important as know-how. Thus, Xi’s careful cultivation of Obama is nearing its end.

That cultivation has included the development of relations between the two First Ladies, and Xi’s affinity with Lincoln High School and Tacoma from early personal associations.

These are human touches, not simply frivolous details. For millions of Americans, they help to flesh out the character of the leader of an otherwise faceless, alien monolith that is China.

The importance of a personable character and thus of personal ties is also more important in the United States than is generally supposed. How can the personal imprint of any particular president on policy be denied?

It is unlikely for US policy on China to be identical with George W. Bush, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the White House. Election impresario and political mud wrestler Donald Trump will want it to be different again in his White House.

The US election season has begun, and among the seasonal domestic bloodsports is China bashing. How will the next president honour any deals Obama now makes with China?

The soothing argument is that however much a maverick a presidential candidate may be, the heft of political realities and high office will weigh on the incoming president to ensure a pragmatic moderation.

The problem is that nothing can guarantee that outcome.

Consistency in China’s external policymaking is less of a problem. A one-party state ensures that regardless of the personal style or preference of the leader of the day, the collective outlook is constant.

Barring unforeseen circumstances and contingencies, the ends and means in China’s long-term plans are reasonably clear. Individual leaders bring only a certain accent or tenor to dealmaking, with certain emphases such as eliminating corruption.

Xi has also called for a major reset in relations with the United States since at least 2013. No country can reasonably reject that call so there has been progress, even if it has been slow.

Xi’s first state visit is particularly significant in tackling three main themes head-on: essential new major-power bilateral relations, economic cooperation whose need is obvious enough, and military cooperation, which is as important as it may seem unlikely.

In mid-2013, just months into his new presidency, Xi flew to Califor­nia for a working meeting with Obama to jointly design a new style of US-China relations. They agreed on the importance of that task and on its follow-through.

This month’s summit is the next big step on that road. In the intervening two years, officials on both sides had been working on consolidating that agreement.

The economic aspects of the reset in relations are the most evident. So are their limitations.

The US Foreign Investment and National Security Act (2007) constrains China’s investments in certain key sectors deemed to impinge on key US infrastructure or other national security interests. Foreign enterprises are known to face difficulties in acquiring stakes in US “strategic industries” – oil or high technology assets.

China followed the US example this year with a draft of its own Foreign Investment Law (2015). During the Seattle trip, Xi pledged to facilitate US investments in China, but it was not clear if any aspect of the FIL would be compromised.

Meanwhile, reports of mergers and acquisitions between China and the United States continue to show promise.

The value of M&A deals in the first half of this year exceeded US$300bil (RM1.3 trillion), an increase of more than 60% over the same period last year, which had already set the record for the first half year.

Perhaps most significantly, China and the United States signed annexes to two agreements on major military operations, as well as air and sea encounters.

With China’s growing naval reach and US naval “rebalancing”, sea lanes in the Western Pacific are becoming more traversed as routes tend to overlap. The agreements signed just days before are intended to improve operational coordination and avoid misunderstanding and false alarms.

The first annex covers a telephone hotline between both countries’ defence ministries and mutual notification of an impending crisis. The second relates to airborne encounters, improved communication and better coordination in emergencies.

These are still early days in such China-US cooperation, but a promising start has been made in addressing the most pressing concerns. More cooperation and coordination can be expected.

More broadly, China-US cooperation has yielded results in environmental management and the Iran nuclear deal. More progress may be envisaged over North Korea, anti-terrorism measures and even improved US-Russia relations.

In already focusing on security provisions for the Western Pacific, with all its implications for the South China Sea and the East China Sea, Beijing and Washington have taken the bull by the horns.

This is surely the better and bolder way. The alternative is a somewhat indecisive and half-hearted attempt to face the issues, in part by deferring them to a later time that may never come.

Now that a bold start has been made, the follow-up has to be at least as gutsy. The momentum, once created, has to be maintained and built on to reach satisfactory policy conclusions.

Chinese commentaries have largely pronounced Xi’s state visit as momentous, in terms of China’s intent in soliciting a positive US response to redefining their bilateral relations. That will also require China’s continued commitment to the cause.

Xi’s objectives should also be Obama’s, as evidenced in their discussions for two years now, particularly since these objectives equally serve US and Chinese interests. To help realise them, the United States needs to contribute its share of commitment.


By Bunn Nagara Behind the Headlines

Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

Xi visit helps US avoid anxiety over China

President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington DC on Thursday. His stay there was the climax of his week-long state visit to the US.

The diplomatic exchanges in recent years seem to have reached a consensus, in which the heads of state prefer to hold a more private and longer meeting, where the subjects of their talks can range from domestic as well as diplomatic matters. Such a scheme helps to build personal trust and enable them to better understand each country's policies.

On Thursday night, Xi and Obama's talk lasted for three hours. On Friday morning the two met again in limited company. When the meeting expanded to more people, the duration was shorter. As such intensive exchanges continue, China and the US are in better place to avoid strategic miscalculation.

As for the achievement of this visit, people are focusing their attention on how much the talks over cyber security can yield and whether a code of behavior to govern the two air forces' encounter will be officially signed. Although the bilateral investment treaty may not be signed this time, an exchange of negative lists for foreign investment will help both sides get closer toward the eventual agreement.

The strategic impact of Xi's visit will take effect in the near future, which will be assessed by how much the tension will ease around thorny issues between the two countries.

Talk about a "Thucydides trap," in which a rising power clashes with an existing power, permeates academic and media circles, especially in the US.

However, both Xi and Obama said they do not believe in the Thucydides trap, which means the two countries will not walk toward the strategic confrontation.

The US had three enemies in history, Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. China is different from any of the three. It is larger than Germany and Japan, and it was more efficient than the Soviet Union. The most important thing is that China is one of the largest US trade partners. The US has more interests in China than in any of its allies.

China is still growing at a high speed, though the momentum has slowed. But the growth still outpaces other major economies. The anxiety from the US is inevitable.

Xi's latest visit has helped ease the anxiety from the US. The Chinese and US people may also do something to help their countries avoid the Thucydides trap - give their governments more flexibility so that both can make compromises on thorny matters. - Global Times

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Saturday 10 May 2014

It's is our battle: Obama in Malaysia

The biggest takeaway from Barack Obama’s speech was that he really isn’t that interested in solving our domestic issues.

I WAS one of the lucky young leaders who attended the town hall meeting with United States President Barack Obama. It was an incredible experience and I was impressed by his energy, oratory and diplomacy.

However, that town hall meeting left our social and mainstream media buzzing with two issues – the questions raised by the participants and Obama’s quotes on affirmative action in Malaysia.

Many Malaysians viewed the less-than hard-questions asked Obama (such as the meaning of happiness) as a waste of an opportunity. They felt the most powerful man in the world needed to be asked some powerful questions.

I, too, had some serious questions for him. However, I am not, as some critics put it, “disappointed in the future leaders of Asean” for asking theirs.

Four hundred young people attended the town hall meeting but only eight questions were taken. Two were from the social media (curated by moderators and, therefore, bound to be “safe”). The social media questions and three others from the audience came from non-Malaysians, leaving the remaining questions for only three Malaysians.

Might it simply then had been an unfortunate coincidence that Obama happened to pick the three Malaysians, in a sea of raised hands, who chose not to ask about the TPPA (Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement) or human rights?

Obama is a role model to many. Not all young people are political journalists, critics of his foreign policy or otherwise determined to tembak him.

The Asean participants are my friends and fellow alumni of the US State Departmentsponsored exchange programmes. I know them well enough to know they have a different take to politics than we do.

Malaysians thrive on discussing issues of the day in a kopitiam, at a forum or via Twitter. We’re practically hardwired to talk politics. Contrastingly, my Asean friends are here on a leadership initiative. They’ve attended numerous programmes, conferences and workshops all geared towards helping them become leaders of civil society.

Their focus is to find solutions to poverty, climate change and human trafficking – not to zoom in on policy and trade agreements.

Their questions simply illustrate that they’re more concerned with bettering themselves and their world than turning everything into a debate. This was a town hall for young leaders on leadership. Expect some young (read: naïve) questions on leadership.

At one point during his address, Obama said “Malaysia will not progress if non-Muslims are not given equal opportunities.” I, like many others, took his sound bite to social media.

Many people went further, calling on Obama to pressure our government into reform, to “save us”! And of course we had people labelling Obama a hypocrite, his comment either ridiculous or irrelevant, and condemning those who looked to him as a saviour.

These reactions reminded me that we are once again stuck in our dichotomy of “accept wholesale or reject wholesale”.

I personally think the biggest takeaway from his speech was that he really isn’t that interested in solving our domestic issues.

Many times, he urged us to fight a good fight, but he made it a point to remind us that he has his own problems in America to solve. I couldn’t agree more.

Realistically, the US president has bigger problems to deal with than us.

Idealistically, we shouldn’t need him to help in any major way. My Sejarah textbook taught me that time and again when our rulers were faced with domestic problems, they opened themselves up to colonisation by seeking help from foreigners instead of facing up to their countrymen.

However, I disagree with those who dismiss Obama. Yes, this is an issue we’ve been dealing with for so long that the US president isn’t adding anything substantive to the debate, but that doesn’t make him irrelevant!

It’s like any other old debate such as abortion or creationism. You’re perfectly entitled to roll your eyes and say “Yeah, I’ve heard this one before,” but to some people it’s a big deal to have the leader of the free world publicly say, “I’m on your side.”

Others cite his domestic and foreign policy to label him a hypocrite, but you can agree with what he said yesterday without having to agree to what he said last year or did in Syria.

I highly appreciate the public relations value of the leader of the free world demonstrating an awareness of my cause, but it doesn’t have to follow that I adore him, agree with all his policies or think he’s Superman.

In a week’s time, people will forget what he said. But the fight goes on, right?

So, instead of obsessing over whether he had the right to say what he said, whether it matters that he said what he said, or making idle wishes that someone else had said what he said, let us focus on the more important part of his speech – that it’s our battle.

Open Season by Marina Tan

> Marina Tan won the 2012 English Speaking Union International Public Speaking competition. She is presently studying at Kolej Yayasan UEM and will be going to Yale University in the United States in August to pursue a double major in engineering and economics.

Marina Tan The Star-ESUM Public Speaking Competition 2011



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