As he begins a nine-day trip to the Asia-Pacific region on Friday, President Obama is aiming to reassure jittery U.S. allies and emerging nations that they have another avenue to prosperity, at a time when an increasingly aggressive China is extending its own sphere of influence.
At each stop — a pair of regional summits in Honolulu and Bali, Indonesia, sandwiched around a visit to Australia to highlight a military alliance — Obama will send a clear signal that the United States is a “Pacific power,” eager to help build economic success and security in the fast-developing region.
In doing so, the president will make clear the Chinese must “follow the rules of the road,” as one administration official put it this week.
High on the list of U.S. priorities is getting commitments from China to enact more flexible currency rate standards to help balance trade; respect intellectual property rights; and adopt a less aggressive military posture in the disputed South China Sea.
For their part, the Chinese are concerned about a budding trade pact between the United States and eight other nations, and they will be closely monitoring Obama’s visit next week to an Australian military base.Since last year, China has fed the worries of its neighbors with a series of aggressive diplomatic and military moves, including attention-grabbing confrontations in the South China Sea, which is believed to hold valuable oil and minerals and is heavily used for commercial shipping.
The area has been in dispute for decades, with various portions claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. But China has made the largest claim, on a U-shaped section that covers almost the entire region.
China’s increasing willingness to throw its weight around has put other countries on edge and spurred them to solicit U.S. assistance. Even Burma, also known as Myanmar, appears to be hedging against the rise of its longtime ally, by releasing political prisoners in order to appeal to the West.
“It is both natural and inevitable that the leaders will address the South China Sea issues in the context of maritime security,” said Danny Russel, senior director for Asia on the National Security Council.
At the East Asia Summit in Bali next week, Russel said, the United States and other participating nations, including China, will seek consensus on “international norms and law — freedom of navigation, the right to unimpeded legitimate commerce — collaborative efforts to avoid the accidental conflict or miscalculation . . . that could lead to a spike in tensions.”
Even before Obama departs Washington on Friday, small signs of the U.S.-China rivalry for influence have begun to emerge. When U.S. officials said this week that they hoped to ramp up talks on trade and green jobs growth with emerging nations at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Honolulu, Beijing quickly criticized the agenda as too ambitious.
U.S. expectations are “too high” and “beyond the reach” of many developing Asian nations, Foreign Minister Wu Hailong complained in remarks to reporters.
Obama’s trip is part of the administration’s evolving foreign policy vision. Officials have pointed to the wind-down of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and said now is the time to pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region.
As Wu made clear, the U.S. administration’s bolder stance has not gone over well in Beijing. Chinese officials are wary about U.S. involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade pact still in the works that would include at least eight other nations.
And the Chinese are keeping an eye on Obama’s visit next week to a military facility in Darwin, Australia, at which he and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard are expected to unveil an agreement to allow U.S. Marines use of Australian bases for training and exercises.
Obama will hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Honolulu on Saturday.
In China, “There is a widespread belief that the U.S. is stirring up trouble,” saidElizabeth Economy, director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, who is visiting Beijing this week.
“The TPP is seen as something ‘mysterious’ that is designed in some way to contain China. . . . The dominant theme I am hearing here is that the international community is always asking for more from China and not appreciating what China already contributes to the global system.”
Indeed, a growing number of nations, including Australia, count China as their largest trading partner, critical to their own economies. The Obama administration is eyeing China's vast consumer base as a huge opportunity for U.S.-produced goods. In Southeast Asia, China also has ramped up its international aid to emerging economies.
With its economic growth, however, has come increased Chinese aggression, bolstered by the rapid modernization of its military. Defense spending has seen double-digit growth in China for much of the past two decades.
This year, China launched its first aircraft carrier — a retrofitted Soviet vessel. It is developing an anti-ship missile that could limit the range and options of U.S. aircraft carriers should a conflict arise over Taiwan. And earlier this year, just hours before a visit by then-defense secretary Robert M. Gates, China debuted its new J-20 stealth fighter jet in a provocative test flight.
In his tour of Asia last month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told two of America’s closest allies — Japan and Korea — that America is committed to the Pacific. He vowed that even in the face of defense budget cuts, “we are not anticipating any cutbacks in this region. If anything, we’re going to strengthen our presence in the Pacific.”
Douglas Paal, head of the Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Obama must reassure allies that the United States will be more focused on Asia than it has been for the past decade.
“The U.S. has no ability to keep China out or to keep China down,” Paal said. But at the same time, the United States has too many interests in the Asia to be absent.
“We haven’t been tending [those interests] properly since 1997,” Paal said. “And now you have to do the hard work to get back in after exempting yourself for 12 years.”
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China is a sovereign nation and it can do what it pleases with its currency as we can do and should do with ours- putting the Federal Reserve under congressional control as Hamilton stated we should do...The bottom line is this the Globalist Slave Trade groupies like Obama, Gore and Bush want to have their cake and eat it to; they want to keep our export rate down to stunt the growth of homegrown industry and the Middle Class it enables while simultaneously dictating to other countries how they...See More
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