At a recent event at the Asia Society in New York, Ambassador Gary Locke spoke with Asia Society’s Orville Schell and George Stephanopolous of ABC News about the current status of U.S.-China relations and the new leadership in Beijing. From Asia Society’s website:
“There will be continuity in the U.S.-China relationship,” Locke told a standing-room-only crowd at Asia Society in New York on Monday evening. “So much of the world’s economy is in the Asia-Pacific arena. Almost 60 percent of the world’s GDP is in the Asia-Pacific region. And we are so economically intertwined as two countries. … So many of the problems facing the world today will only be solved with the United States and China cooperating and collaborating together.”
Locke was joined on stage by moderator George Stephanopoulos, of ABC News, and Asia Society’s own Orville Schell, who heads up the Center on U.S.-China Relations.
Locke and Schell both had positive things to say about new Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who was named Hu Jintao’s successor at the highly secretive 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing last month.
“He’s very much more casual, more at ease in public and with people,” Locke said. But he later added, “We don’t really have a great sense of the policies of Xi Jinping, because China is ruled by a committee of seven. … We really won’t know for a while exactly how fast, how far he’s going to move, and what areas he’ll emphasize.”
See a video of the event:
