For myriad of reasons, I have written several commentaries on Xi Jinxing's state visit. This version appeared in China-US Focus and repeated in Asia Times.
China’s president Xi Jinping is coming to the U.S. next
month. He has been here before but this time he is coming as head of state for
an official state visit. Aside from a great show of pomp and color to beam back
for the home TV audience, what else can he accomplish as his prize for coming?
Shortly after Xi became China’s paramount leader, he accepted
President Obama’s invitation for an informal summit meeting in a bucolic
southern California estate. He must have thought that getting to know Obama on
a personal basis would be an important step to building a closer bilateral
relationship. From the outset, Xi has placed a closer working relationship with
the U.S. among his highest priorities.
When Obama visited Beijing last November, besides a red
carpet treatment, he and Xi made two joint surprising announcements. One was an
accord to control the emission of green house gases and the other was to issue
ten-year, multiple entry visas to citizens of the other country. The
multi-entry visa has already resulted in a significant increase of Chinese
tourists to the U.S. and a substantial boost to the local economy. Control of green
house gases has been one of Obama’s major initiatives that he could now check
off as mission in process of being accomplished.
He got tangible results and should feel good about his trip
to China. This time, what tangible outcomes Xi will get out of his visit to the
U.S. is very much up to Obama.
From the beginning of Obama’s administration to now,
America’s relationship with China has been more down than up. For every 100,000
strong initiative to encourage American students to study in China, there have
been befuddled gestures contrary to building a friendlier relationship. One of
the strangest was to vocally opposed the formation of the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank. For that Obama got a well-deserved rebuff from the community
of nations that overrode his concerns.
For most of his administration, Obama’s foreign policy
followed the disastrous course left by his predecessor combined with his desire
to offend the least number of his Congressional critics. Lately, however, Obama
appears to be conducting more independent measures of foreign policy (note as
examples, Cuba and Iran), more according to what he thinks is proper and
perhaps with an eye to building his presidential legacy.
Now with Xi’s visit, Obama has a chance to make a positive
course correction on America’s most important international relations.
Surely leaving America’s relationship with China worse off, despite
the efforts of the seven presidents that preceded him, would only tarnish and
not contribute to his legacy. If Obama is receptive to taking actions that
would significantly improve relationship with China, I have some suggestions.
First, Obama can visibly stop treating China as an adversary
of America. To that end, he should order the military to stop surveillance flights
off the coast of China. He won’t be giving up anything that can’t be obtained
by satellite. (Let his successor resume those flights in some future date, if
that’s what he/she wants.) The main effect of those flights has been as a
psychological irritant and the public relations impact of halting the flights
would be huge—a small gesture that would give Xi a lot of face back home.
Second, Obama can offer to help Xi’s anti-corruption
campaign by making it difficult for corrupt officials to hide in the U.S. In so
doing, Obama would be rendering valuable assistance essential for Xi to complete
the most important task on his agenda. At the same time, Obama would put
America on the moral high ground and be able to tell the world that America does
not coddle criminals and fugitives from other countries. Heretofore allowing crooked
officials to run loose in America is hardly what the Statue of Liberty’s
welcome of immigrants stands for.
Third, Obama should take the opportunity of this summit to
reverse his awful and awkward position relative to Xi’s pet projects, namely,
the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank alongside his silk-road initiatives.
Obama should openly applaud Xi for his vision and pledge enthusiastic support
and willingness to co-invest and work alongside China in Asia. Xi most likely
won’t think of how to take up Obama’s offer but nonetheless his gesture would
be warmly appreciated. His message of goodwill would be noted around the world.
The above three initiatives are easy for Obama to implement and
can contribute a lot to bringing the two countries closer together. There is
yet a fourth initiative that Obama could put on the table with chutzpah and
panache on the occasion of his private meeting with Xi, and that would be to propose
working on denuclearizing Korea.
Obama can see that South Korea president Park will be in
Beijing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. North
Korea’s Kim is not invited. Arguably China gets along with South Korea as well
as the U.S. The three parties, sitting on the same side of the table, can begin
the serious discussion that would neutralize future threats from the North. It
would take serious efforts from all the parties over time, and Obama can seize
a statesman’s initiative by proposing to Xi to let the three parties begin the
process.
Solving the Korea conundrum would
be a spectacular exclamation mark of his legacy, an accomplishment that has
eluded all the presidents that preceded him. His mere willingness to suggest
taking on a risky and delicate project would build confidence and mutual trust
with Xi and could lead to successful collaboration on many other fronts.
