Hu said in a message that China-U.S. relations made positive progress in the past four years as a result of joint efforts.

Hu said he and Obama have reached consensus on building a China-U.S. cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit, and on exploring the construction of new relations between big powers.

Bilateral mechanisms including the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the High-level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange have produced good results, he said, adding the two countries have conducted fruitful coordination and cooperation in bilateral and major international and regional affairs, he said.

Maintaining steady, healthy and stable development of Sino-U.S. relations is in the fundamental interests of both peoples and conducive to peace, stability and development in the Asia-Pacific and the world at large, Hu said.

Voice of America reports that Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei echoed Hu’s diplomatic tone:

“Maintaining a steady, healthy and stable development of China-U.S. relations serves the fundamental interests of the two countries and the two peoples as well as peace, stability and development of the Asia Pacific region and beyond,” said said Hong Lei. “China is ready to work with the U.S. side, look to the future and make continuous efforts for fresh and greater progress in the building of China-U.S. cooperative partnership and deliver greater benefits to the two peoples and people of the world.”

Chinese netizens reflected on the U.S. election with curiosity and indifference, and one political observer told CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout that China would be pleased that Obama won because “it’s better to have the devil you know.” Official media, meanwhile, presented a mixed reaction and stressed the need to improve ties. The Global Times published a critical assessment of the U.S. process and the West, claiming that the populism encouraged by such systems causes governments to shed “their responsibility to lead society” and place the overall progress of the country second to the priority of winning votes.

Other state mouthpieces took a more conciliatory, yet still cautious, stance. The China Daily concluded that the outcome would not change the nature of Sino-U.S. relations, as the same frictions still must be addressed by each side. And while a Xinhua News commentary lauded the “steady progress” in Sino-U.S. relations over the past four years, it also expressed hope that the differences between the two sides would not jeopardize their cooperation going forward:

Whereas, there remains the antiquated attitude in which an emerging player is considered as a threat to established ones and should be suppressed. This mindset has led to much unrest and even world wars in the past, but has yet to be abandoned.

If the United States does not change its traditionally hegemonic ways of thinking, there will be more and more conflicts as China continues to develop and protect its own interests.

Moreover, China-U.S. relations are responsive to complications stemming from domestic political issues. Judging from how U.S. presidential candidates spoke about China in the lead up to Election Day and, in fact, how other politicians have spoken about China in a number of other campaigns, it appears that China has become an easy target and a scapegoat for those looking to avoid taking responsibility for domestic issues in the U.S.

It is essential for the two countries to think positively. They should endeavor to prevent domestic politics from harming bilateral ties as well as develop effective dispute management mechanisms.

Indeed, as The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos wrote just before the election, 2012 may have marked “the year when China entered the center ring of American political grandstanding.” From the early days of the Republican primary, through the closing weeks of the general election, politicians in America leveraged insecurities about China into heated and sometimes indefensible statements (see Pete Hoekstra’s much-criticized Super Bowl ad) about the threat of its rise. Both Obama and Romney ultimately found themselves engaged in a game of one-upsmanship over who would be tougher on China, and Osnos dubbed the candidates “The Panda Sluggers” for their China bashing during the debates.

Mark MacKinnon at the Globe and Mail reports that Beijing’s leadership “heaved a sigh of relief” at the possibility that the unprecedented anti-China rhetoric was, as Xinhua News hoped, “merely campaign tricks” that would now give way to more moderate positions. And now that he has secured a second term, The Wall Street Journal’s Bob Davis and Keith Johnson write that Obama must recalibrate how to approach ties with China and its new leadership:

Once Mr. Obama and Xi Jinping, to take over as head of China’s Communist Party in the coming week and as president in the spring, meet as counterparts, thorny issues and strains await—from trade conflicts and disparities over human rights to the U.S. strategic pivot to build its military and diplomatic presence in Asia and China’s increasing assertiveness vis-à-vis neighbors in disputed waters.

The Obama administration has angered China by supporting calls for a multilateral solution to competing territorial claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. It has also pledged to extend U.S. missile-defense systems to guard against potential actions from North Korea and said it will put 2,500 Marines on Australia’s north coast, moves that have stirred concern in Beijing.

…

The administration’s “pivot” to Asia is an overriding issue. Mr. Obama will need to decide just how far he wants to go in fortifying the U.S. military posture in the Pacific, especially in a dispute with U.S. ally and treaty partner Japan over an island chain.

As Davis and Johnson point out, Obama will have an early opportunity to project his second-term plans when he attends the East Asia Summit in Cambodia next week. For his part, The South China Morning Post’s Gary Tarode expects the U.S. president to “engage China and its neighbours in a fresh diplomatic offensive” while in the region.

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Post tags: anti-China rhetoric, Barack Obama, china bashing, Hu Jintao, leadership transition, Mitt Romney, U.S. election 2012, U.S. relations, Xi Jinping
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Many of the implications of a rising China for the United States were barely addressed by President Obama and Mitt Romney in their debate Monday night, as both candidates swung foreign policy questions back to domestic issues like jobs and education.

[…] Heated tensions between China and three American allies in the Pacific — Japan, South Korea and the Philippines — went unmentioned during the debate. The worrisome standoffs and violent protests over various disputed islands did not come up.

[…] Two weeks from now, the Chinese Communist Party will install a new group of leaders — the Standing Committee of the Politburo, with just nine members, or perhaps now seven — who will be making the major policy decisions for China over the next decade. The party congress and the leadership transition were not mentioned in the debate.

Despite Romney’s repeated threat to immediately label China a currency manipulator, examined by The Los Angeles Times’ Jim Puzzanghera, one of the few eye-catching moments was the Republican’s conciliatory tone when he stated that “we don’t have to be an adversary [with China] in any way, shape or form”. This challenged Obama’s unusually hardline reference to China as only a “potential” partner. Brian Fung at The Atlantic analyzed the rhetorical reversal between the two candidates:

The exchange between Obama and Romney was merely one of several painting the former as the hawk and the latter as the dove — an odd turn when the president is actually the one who has had to work with the Chinese on world governance while Romney, as the challenger, has had the luxury of making campaign commitments the media will forget or overlook later.

As for the way the Chinese themselves might view this exchange, the leadership in Beijing likely recognizes that in an election-year context, candidates will say things to appease domestic audiences they aren’t necessarily committed to. But one thing’s certain: The fact that the People’s Republic will be going through its own power transition just days after Americans head to the ballot box has China’s elite watching Boca Raton about as closely as the rest of us.

Zhu Feng, an expert on U.S.-China relations at Peking University, shared his views on the dynamics of China issues in the campaign with The Wall Street Journal:

In the past, the sitting president would typically have to defend his administration’s China policy against attacks from the challenger. But it seems the two of them have some sort of tacit agreement on China policy.

The only point that made Romney stand out was this so-called “labeling China a currency manipulator.” But I really doubt if that’s anything more than just election rhetoric.

The interest seems to extend well beyond officials and academics. Surveys suggest that more ordinary Chinese are watching the 2012 U.S. election than followed the 2008 race. Josh Chin at The Wall Street Journal looked into Chinese online reactions to the Monday’s debate:

“It’s a shame we can’t see the U.S. presidential debates broadcast live,” said another user. “Actually, I don’t care so much about who would be the president. I just want to learn more about the election itself. Over here, it was decided who would be next a long time ago, so there’s nothing to watch.”

[…] ”What I don’t quite understand why they spend so long debating international issues in a country where 70% of people probably wouldn’t be able to locate China on the map,” said another user. “Is it because they’re not capable of solving their domestic problems and are looking for easier overseas target instead?”

[…] Chinese interest in this year’s U.S. elections appears much stronger than it was in 2008—a shift some analysts attribute to an increased interest among Chinese people in democracy. More than a third of Chinese people said they were paying close attention to this election, up from 17% during the 2008 contest, according to a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year. The only other countries that showed rising interest in the U.S. election were Turkey and Pakistan, which both edged up 1%.

A particularly controversial aspect of the debate was the absence of human rights topics. From Evan Osnos at The New Yorker:

[T]he most surprising fact about the debate’s discussion of China—and the one that tells us the most about the new relationship taking shape the world’s two greatest powers—was that neither candidate in uttered the words, “human rights” in relation to the People’s Republic. That used to be a standard feature. On October 11, 1992, candidate Bill Clinton dinged George H. W. Bush for having “coddled” the Communist government in the years after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. “I would be firm,” Clinton declared. “If we can stand up for our economics, we ought to be able to preserve the democratic interests of the people of China.” The next day, his campaign put out a statement denouncing the “butchers of Beijing” and faulting Bush for deciding “that we should give Most Favored Nation status to Chinese Communists, who deny their people’s basic rights.” (But, once in office, Clinton pushed through legislation making China’s Most Favored Nation status permanent, a decision he called a “principled, pragmatic approach.”)

The absence of a discussion of human rights will not go over well in the American human-rights community or with Tibetan groups. For the moment, however, in Beijing it is being greeted with pleasure. China takes careful note of vocabulary—the Foreign Ministry keeps track of the mentions of specific words—and the erosion of human rights from the candidates’ priorities will be taken as a sign, as foreign-affairs specialist Zhu Feng put it, that economic issues are “something they really care more about now than human rights or security.”

For detailed fact-checking of the final presidential debate, see ‘Romney Swaps Apology Charge With Obama Jab: Reality Check’, at Bloomberg.

See more on Sino-U.S. relations via CDT.

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Post tags: Barack Obama, china bashing, democracy, Mitt Romney, online opinion, presidential election, public opinion, U.S. election 2012, U.S. relations, United States
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The relationship between China and the United States has become more brittle in the past two years, with differences over trade and strategic interests stoking American fears that China is infringing on the United States’ longstanding influence in Asia. For their part, the Chinese watch with growing alarm as their country has become a frequent target of blame for the weakness in the American job market.

“The U.S. general election, originally thought only a battle over domestic issues — the economy, fiscal deficit and health care — has now embroiled China as a punching bag,” said Fred Hu, chairman of Primavera Capital, a private equity group in Beijing, and former Greater China chairman of Goldman Sachs. “The noises from the campaign trail are quite disconcerting. It remains to be seen whether the shrill campaign rhetoric about China will just remain as bombast.”

The fears over China in the United States, experts here note, are not limited to the campaign trail. Last month Mr. Obama cited national security concerns as the reason for ordering a Chinese company to divest its shares in wind farm projects near a Navy testing facility in Oregon. A scathing Congressional report called the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei a national security threat to the United States.

Although Perlez suggests that the Chinese government “would probably prefer a continuation of the Obama administration”, Fudan University’s Shen Dingli writes that “a President Romney might actually be better for China”. From Foreign Policy:

The truth is that it still matters to Beijing who’s in the White House. And China won’t have as much to worry about with a President Romney. If Romney wins in November, both he and presumably Xi Jinping will likely shake hands and forget what candidate Romney has said thus far, in much the same manner as both Beijing and Washington have moved beyond the rhetoric of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.

But China has reason to be concerned that a second term for Obama — and the continuation of present policies — would present continuous challenges to the relationship. A new president would allow for a clean slate, one that wouldn’t push the United States in a harmful direction with regard to China. And, frankly, the quiet truth is that even if President Romney were to intend irrationally to hurt China, there’s little chance he would actually be able to chart a path to do so in which the United States remained unhurt by its own actions.

In a video posted on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal’s hina news editor Carlos Tejada discussed how Beijing is responding to the heated rhetoric used by the candidates. See also previous CDT coverage of the 2012 U.S. election, including how official media and netizens in China reacted to the first and second debates.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, china bashing, Mitt Romney, U.S. election 2012, U.S. relations
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[...]the dawn of a Chinese century—and the end of an American one—is not inevitable. America possesses inherent strengths that grant us a competitive advantage over China and the rest of the world. We must, however, restore those strengths.

[...]Barack Obama is moving in precisely the wrong direction. The shining accomplishment of the meetings in Washington this week with Xi Jinping—China’s vice president and likely future leader—was empty pomp and ceremony.

[...]A nation that represses its own people cannot ultimately be a trusted partner in an international system based on economic and political freedom. While it is obvious that any lasting democratic reform in China cannot be imposed from the outside, it is equally obvious that the Chinese people currently do not yet enjoy the requisite civil and political rights to turn internal dissent into effective reform.

I will never flinch from ensuring that our country is secure. And security in the Pacific means a world in which our economic and military power is second to none. It also means a world in which American values—the values of liberty and opportunity—continue to prevail over those of oppression and authoritarianism.

“In the economic arena, we must directly counter abusive Chinese practices in the areas of trade, intellectual property, and currency valuation. While I am prepared to work with Chinese leaders to ensure that our countries both benefit from trade, I will not continue an economic relationship that rewards China’s cheating and penalizes American companies and workers.

Unless China changes its ways, on day one of my presidency I will designate it a currency manipulator and take appropriate counteraction. A trade war with China is the last thing I want, but I cannot tolerate our current trade surrender.”  (emphasis added)

The bolded section represents the only portion of the op-ed in which Romney even hints that he might cooperate with China.  The rest of it is pretty silly.  It’s ludicrous for Romney to claim he doesn’t want a trade war in the same breath that he promises “day one” action against China.  No wonder conservatives are labeling Romney’s China policy as “blaringly anti-trade.”

To be blunt, this China policy reads like it was composed by the Hulk.  Maybe this will work in the GOP primary, but Romney and his China advisors should know better.

Debatably fluent mandarin speaker and former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman – who has offered Romney his endorsement since dropping out of the GOP race – has also expressed disapproval of Romney’s stance on China. From ABC News:

“Well, let’s just say that it’s not unusual for candidates to be saying certain things about China,” Huntsman said. “I’ve seen a lot of candidates who later became president who used a lot of rhetoric. It’s much easier to talk about China in terms of the fear factor than the opportunity factor. I would disagree with some of what Governor Romney has said and it’s not surprising that Republicans disagree with each other from time to time.”

[...]“When it comes to China, I think it’s wrong-headed when you talk about slapping a tariff on day one. That pushes aside the reality, the complexity of the relationship, you sit down at the table with somebody like Xi Jinping, and you say we’ve got North Korea. We’ve got Iran. We’ve got Pakistan, We’ve got Burma. We’ve got the South China Sea. We have trade and investment, and they all kind of interrelate one with another when you sit down and negotiate a deal. That’s just the way the U.S.-China relationship is and has been for 40 years.”

A New York Times op-ed released on the same day as Romney’s offers a contrasting view. Focusing on the fundamental differences in the political models of the U.S. and China, Eric X. Li explains why China’s system may prove to be the better one:

The fundamental difference between Washington’s view and Beijing’s is whether political rights are considered God-given and therefore absolute or whether they should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation.

The West seems incapable of becoming less democratic even when its survival may depend on such a shift. In this sense, America today is similar to the old Soviet Union, which also viewed its political system as the ultimate end.

History does not bode well for the American way. Indeed, faith-based ideological hubris may soon drive democracy over the cliff.

Also see a Think Progress post pointing out that Romney’s plan is another expression of what has become a GOP trope. The latest Sinocism post asks if Romney’s China bashing is hypocritical. A collection of Romney quotes about China can be found at the 2012 Republican Candidates website. For more on U.S. views of and policy reactions to China’s rise, see America’s Incoherent Asia Policy and The Great China Debate, both via CDT.

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Post tags: Asia Pacific Policy, china bashing, Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, U.S. relations, United States
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As Goldman notes [in a previous Bloomberg article], candidate Obama didn’t shy away from using China as a political weapon, famously calling President George W. Bush a “patsy” for not driving a harder bargain on trade talks. That’s a lot tougher for him to do — impossible, actually — now that he’s the one ultimately responsible for negotiations. That’s a difficulty the Romney campaign is happy to exploit.

In a China Daily article about the coming Xi-Obama meeting, recent swipes made by Presidential incumbents and hopefuls are recalled:

Vice-President Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to the United States will help China-US ties fly clear of US election year turbulence, experts said.

[...]Xi will meet US President Barack Obama in Washington on Feb 14, the White House announced.

China bashing is becoming ever-more frequent in this election year.

Mitt Romney, the leading Republican candidate, pledged to “clamp down” on Beijing as a currency manipulator and openly threatened a trade war.

In his recent State of the Union address, Obama singled out China for unfair trade practices. He also pointed out China’s solar research facility and supercomputer as examples of global challenges facing the US.

An article in The Australian emphasizes the rhetorical nature of China bashing in U.S. politics: 

Romney’s longstanding efforts to paint himself as someone willing to “stand up to China” exemplifies an alarming trend of China-bashing in US politics.

Rick Santorum has echoed Romney, declaring, the US has a moral obligation to defeat China’s “godless socialism”.

Such statements are primarily targeted at shoring up political support and secondarily at painting Obama as being soft on China. We should not take them as an accurate indication of future policy. And despite this overriding political calculus, these remarks are on to something: Beijing’s currency manipulation gives China a advantage in global trade, and its abuse of intellectual property rights ought to be condemned.

[...]The shortsightedness of the recent China-bashing exhibited in both the Republican primary debates and Obama’s State of the Union address exemplifies Washington’s current lack of grand strategy and historical awareness.

An editorial printed in the Holland Sentinel – Hoekstra’s own local daily based in Holland, Michigan – reprimands Hoekstra for his “political cheap shot”:

Pete Hoekstra should be ashamed for his Super Bowl airing of an inappropriate and insensitive political advertisement aimed at U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

The political cheap shot was aimed at Sen. Stabenow, but its shrapnel hit Chinese-Americans across the state and nation.

In 2012, more than ever, we need less political rhetoric and more solid plans to get Michigan working again. China-bashing is unacceptable and is not a plan. Even in the rough and tumble world of politics, there should be no room for xenophobia and racism.

Also see a response to Hoekstra’s Super Bowl display from the satirists at Funny or Die.

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At his campaign stops, people young and old have approached Mr. Huntsman with a chipper “Ni hao” (hello) or “Ni hao ma” (how are you). Some have waded through the gauntlet of television cameras to tell Mr. Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, about their trip to Beijing, their dining experiences in Hong Kong or their son’s college semester in Shanghai.

…

Mr. Huntsman, who learned Mandarin as a Mormon in Taiwan in the 1980s, has sprinkled Chinese phrases around the campaign trail for months, including in Saturday’s debate. When former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts said he would not let China “kill American jobs any longer,” Mr. Huntsman quipped in Mandarin, “He doesn’t understand the situation.”

Reuters points out that Huntsman wouldn’t be the first president to speak Chinese, even if his claims to fluency have come under scrutiny in recent months. Huntsman has also criticized his GOP rivals for anti-China pandering during the campaign, and in turn has come under fire for his China ties. One Ron Paul support group posted a video on YouTube questioning Huntsman’s values and calling him “the Manchurian Candidate,” though Paul disavowed the ad. After Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney attacked Huntsman in a weekend debate for serving as ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, a Democrat, fellow candidate Newt Gingrich called Romney “narrow-minded” and defended Huntsman’s credentials. From AFP:

“Governor Huntsman had lived for years in Asia, speaks fluent Chinese, is extraordinarily prepared to be the American ambassador to China and I suspect at that point he took it as a citizen” out of a sense of duty, said Gingrich.

“There are plenty of things that we can argue about without impugning the motives of somebody who has served this country at considerable personal inconvenience,” said the former lawmaker.

Huntsman, who had offered a wobbly defense of his time in Beijing in a debate late Saturday, took the fight to Romney in a Sunday face-off, saying the millionaire venture capitalist had attacked him for “putting my country first” at a time when Romney was raising cash to run for his presidential campaign.

Today, The China Daily shrugged off the anti-China rhetoric as campaign posturing that will subside following the election:

Analysts said due to the changing balance of power between the United States and China, US presidential candidates tend to propose tough policies on China and make China an eye-catching topic to gain votes.

Shen Dingli, director of the Center for American Studies at Shanghai-based Fudan University, said the presidential candidates have no other choice but to criticize China in the election, as the US is in a phase of relatively rapid decline.

“But such criticism is only made for the purposes of the election campaign, and the winner of the election would return to rational policies on China after assuming office,” Shen told China Daily.

Shen from Fudan University said China doesn’t have to care too much about such criticism during an election year, and no reaction to the US election campaign is the best way to guarantee a smooth transition in bilateral relations in 2012.

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The Commerce Department said on Wednesday it would investigate whether Chinese companies sell solar panels in the United States at unfair discounts and receive illegal government subsidies.

The trade dispute, one of several sensitive economic and trade issues between the United States and China, could lead to steep duties on imports of Chinese panels and help struggling domestic manufacturers.

The action is opposed by companies in the U.S. solar industry that count on importing cheap panels to boost solar power generation.

However, not everyone in the green energy sector of the USA is against the influx of cheap Chinese panels. From USA Today:

Solar manufacturers that filed a petition Oct. 19 against China’s subsidies said the country is illegally dumping its silicon solar products in the U.S. market to bankrupt competitors. Other solar companies argued the resulting lower panel prices benefit all consumers.

[...]U.S. energy officials say China spent more than $30 billion in 2010 alone in subsidies for its solar industry. Last week, when asked about the trade petition, President Obama said China has “questionable competitive practices” on clean energy and his administration has fought “these kinds of dumping activities.”

Other solar companies say China’s investment has benefited U.S. customers because panel prices are now 30% lower than in January 2010. On Tuesday, to counter the trade petition, they launched the rival Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy or (CASE.) Members include China-based SunTech as well as Recurrent Energy, Solar City, SolarFirst, Inc., Sungevity, SunRun and Westinghouse Solar.

According to Xinhua, the American rhetoric is not only hypocritically anti-green, but also simply another excuse to China bash as election time approaches in the US:

The United States wants to push for a free trade deal for environmental goods at the upcoming APEC meeting, but erecting a barrier against China’s solar products will retard its mission and impair global green efforts.

[...]It has become a pitiful reality that whenever elections near in some countries, some politicians resort to China bashing with no sound reasons to win votes.

If the United States wants to persuade other countries to lower tariffs on green products at the APEC meeting, it needs to set a good example.

It is time for the U.S. to take a rational approach to avoid any artificial blows to the solar industry still in infancy which could impede the global green drive.

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