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China Welcomes Obama’s Win, but Hopes for More Balanced Ties With the U.S.
China Welcomes Obama’s Win, but Hopes for More Balanced Ties With the U.S.
(about 3 hours later)
BEIJING — With the re-election of President Barack Obama to a second term and the imminent transfer of power in China to a new generation of leaders, one of the biggest challenges facing Mr. Obama will be finding a strategic and economic role for the United States in Asia that is acceptable to its strong network of allies and friends without alienating Beijing, analysts in the region said.
BEIJING — With the re-election of President Obama to a second term and the imminent transfer of power in China to a new generation of leaders, one of the biggest challenges facing Mr. Obama will be finding a strategic and economic role for the United States in Asia that is acceptable to its strong network of allies and friends without alienating the Chinese, analysts in the region said.
In China, the government welcomed Mr. Obama’s victory, but woven into the warm words from outgoing President Hu Jintao was a warning that the United States should be a more cooperative partner as China, even with a slowing economy, continues to rise in wealth and power.
In China, the government welcomed Mr. Obama’s victory, but woven into the warm words from the departing President Hu Jintao was a warning that the United States should be a more cooperative partner as China, even with a slowing economy, continues to rise in wealth and power.
The incoming Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, who will be anointed at the end of the 18th Communist Party Congress that opens here Thursday, has expressed the idea of a “new type of relationship between major countries in the 21st century.” The goal, according to Chinese analysts, is to share more and more power with the United States in the decades ahead, much as Britain opened the door to a rising United States around the globe at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th.
The presumptive new leader of China, Xi Jinping, has expressed the idea of a “new type of relationship between major countries in the 21st century.”
But the United States policy of a “pivot” toward Asia that Mr. Obama announced a year ago — meaning more American naval and air power would return to the region after the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — is not viewed as a partnership by China, but as an unfriendly effort to contain a rising China.
The goal appears to be for China to share more and more power with the United States in the decades ahead, much as Britain opened the door to a rising United States around the end of the 19th century and into the 20th. But many in Washington fear that rather than share power, China wants to unravel America’s alliances in Asia.
And the United States policy of a “pivot” toward Asia that Mr. Obama announced a year ago — meaning more American naval and air power would return to the region — is viewed by China as an unfriendly effort at containment.
“While everyone in Asia wants the U.S. to stay, they want it to stay as a balancing power, not as a primary power,” said Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.
“While everyone in Asia wants the U.S. to stay, they want it to stay as a balancing power, not as a primary power,” said Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.
Allies of the United States like Japan and Australia, which have secured robust economic relationships with China while maintaining traditional military ties with the United States, do not want to be forced to choose between Beijing and Washington, he said.
Allies of the United States like Japan and Australia, which have secured robust economic relationships with China while maintaining traditional military ties with the United States, do not want to be forced to choose between Beijing and Washington, he said.
As China continues to modernize its military, particularly its navy and air force, its goal is to replace the post-World War II regional order of American domination with one in which China has at least as much power in Asia and the western Pacific as the United States.
The Obama administration’s recent efforts to deepen relations with China’s Asian neighbors — not just an enhanced military presence but also a regionwide free-trade accord that excludes China — are seen in Beijing as a way of resisting China’s challenge to American leadership in Asia, analysts said.
The Obama administration’s recent efforts to expand and deepen relations with China’s Asian neighbors — not just an enhanced military presence but also a regionwide free trade accord that excludes China — are seen in Beijing as a way of resisting China’s challenge to American leadership in Asia, analysts said.
Whether the United States has the capability and will to follow through on its promises remains very much an open question.
But whether the United States — which will have a new secretary of state next year after Hillary Rodham Clinton leaves office — has the capability and will to follow through on its promises in the region remains very much an open question here.
Martin
Fackler contributed reporting from Tokyo, and Thomas Fuller from Bangkok.
“The pivot is a beautiful phrase, but we’re still wondering, ‘What does it really mean?’ ” said Fumiaki Kubo, a professor of public policy at the University of Tokyo. “Where is the beef in American security policy in Asia?”
Of immediate concern for Japan is whether Mr. Obama will stick with it in its territorial dispute with Beijing over the islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. Washington has said that it remains neutral on the sovereignty argument but that the islands fall under the United States security treaty with Japan.
In Vietnam, long wary of its neighbor China, the Obama administration has improved economic relations with the Communist government to the point where, paradoxically, it could develop stronger ties to its former enemy than China, which supported Hanoi in its war for independence but has a centuries-old rivalry with Vietnam.
“I would like to see more U.S. presence in Asia,” said Nguyen Thy Nhan, the head of equity research at VietFund Management, an investment company in Ho Chi Minh City. “This will allow more checks and balances in power in the region.”
One of the possibilities for a second Obama term would be persuading Vietnam to allow the United States Navy to use the strategically located port of Cam Ranh Bay, a relatively inexpensive statement of the pivot toward Asia, though one that would not please China.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta visited the port earlier this year, the first senior American official to do so since the end of the Vietnam War.
Martin Fackler in Tokyo and Tom Fuller in Bangkok contributed reporting.
