Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in the United States last week for his first state visit. Maintaining a busy schedule, Xi met with President Obama at the White House, technology leaders in Seattle and the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
In Washington, Xi and Obama agreed to create a common vision toward a climate agreement at the Paris summit ‘COP21’ later this year and further establish shared norms in the area of cyberspace, according to a report from the White House.
Two Stanford scholars offer their analysis of Xi’s visit in a Q&A. Thomas Fingar discusses outcomes from the Chinese leader’s summit with Obama. Recently returning from Beijing, Karl Eikenberry offers his views on the media and reactions that occurred in China during the week preceding Xi’s visit.
Q&A: Thomas Fingar
Thomas Fingar is a China expert and a distinguished fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is a former deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and previously served as the director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific in the U.S. Department of State.
Coming out of the meeting, where do China and the United States stand on climate change?
China and the United States have declared a willingness to work together on climate change, further than in the past. At their meeting, Xi and Obama agreed to build upon agreements announced last November that proclaim a common vision for the upcoming Paris meeting on climate change. Taken together, these statements mark a dramatic reversal of the antagonism between China and the United States at the 2009 talks in Copenhagen. It sends a strong signal that China and the United States are prepared to cooperate.
Moreover, other countries should no longer fear that their own efforts will be negated by disagreement between the two largest producers of greenhouse gases. They can no longer excuse their own inaction by claims that any potential international agreement on climate change would be vetoed by either China or the United States. The message is — it’s time to get serious.
Was there any progress on cybersecurity issues?
Obama and Xi committed to mitigate malicious cyber activity from their national territory and to refrain from targeting critical infrastructure in peacetime. The former is more significant than the latter. But of course the proof of significance will be how—and how quickly—it is implemented.
However, what is worth noting is the restraint on cyber targeting of infrastructure declared by the United States and China. The two leaders agreed to bring that arena within the purview of the United Nations. It’s a step toward the establishment of an international control regime for cyberspace. Such a regime is badly needed and would be a concrete example of how the two countries can work bilaterally, and multilaterally, to update the global order and address 21st century challenges.
Would you say Xi's trip was a success?
We won’t know how important any of the agreements from Xi’s visit are until we see how they are implemented. Rather than carp about the failure to adopt detailed and binding commitments, however, we should recognize and applaud the fact that the state of U.S.-China relations is less fraught and more future-focused than pessimists maintain.
This is an excerpt of a larger piece written by Thomas Fingar.
Q&A: Karl Eikenberry
Karl Eikenberry is the director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and a distinguished fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Eikenberry is a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and, among other positions, served as defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
How do the Chinese view Xi’s visit?
Chinese state media coverage was intense – far greater than had appeared in the United States Every detail of Xi’s itinerary and exhaustive analyses of the issues likely to be discussed between the two presidents dominated the news. Interestingly, the state media reporting tended to emphasize the hosting arrangements, supportive of President Xi’s desire to place China within the Asia-Pacific Region and globally on an equal footing with the United States.
Whereas U.S. Government leaders hope for specific security and economic agreements – so-called “deliverables” – with China during this visit, Xi and his team place more of a premium on being accorded respect. The Chinese media is an arm of the communist party, and reinforces the party’s goals in its reporting of major issues.
How important do Chinese leaders and the people consider the visit?
I was asked during an interview with Chinese television if this visit was as significant as that of Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the United States in 1979. That event had great historical meaning as it signaled Deng’s commitment to “open up” China after decades of relative isolation. President Xi’s visit can’t be compared with Deng’s in a historical sense. And yet, China has come along way since 1979.
When Deng visited the United States, China was a poor country. Now China is approaching middle-income country status and its GDP is the second largest in the world. President Xi was feted in Seattle this week by the captains of America’s IT industry and accompanied by China’s own IT captains. I expect Deng never could have imagined such a development even in his most optimistic moments.
China’s rapid growth over the past 35 years has been enabled by that country’s integration into the global economic and financial markets, and by an extended period of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. The United States, in turn, has played a decisive role in ensuring these favorable conditions have existed.
Almost everyone I met during my recent Beijing trip expressed concern that Sino-American relations are becoming more punctuated by disputes, such as over maritime and cyber issues. China’s leaders and its people recognize that their country faces a daunting array of political, economic, and security problems that will be difficult to solve if world trade and stability in the Asia-Pacific region are disrupted, likely developments if the United States and China should ever enter into a period of confrontation. So I think that most Chinese are hoping that President Xi’s visit can help put U.S.-China relations on a more positive trajectory.
How would you critique Chinese media coverage of Xi’s visit?
I would give it mixed reviews. In terms of thoroughness, I give it good marks. Frankly, the average Chinese citizen – at least in urban areas – knows far more about this event than the average American citizen. On the other hand, China state media has a strong tendency to downplay America’s concerns about China’s policies – this is worrisome.
For example, I watched China Central Television (CCTV)’s coverage of National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s Sept. 21 speech on U.S.-China relations. The report showed all of the positive parts of Rice’s speech, but very few of her criticisms. This leads the Chinese people to have unrealistic expectations about Sino-American relations, and worse, to entirely blame the United States when inevitable setbacks occur.
There is also a bit of irony worth mentioning. President Xi agreed to provide answers to questions submitted by The Wall Street Journal. The questions were published in that newspaper on the eve of Xi’s trip. The next morning, I was watching CCTV and listened as a presenter read Xi’s answers verbatim. But I was perplexed, because I thought The Wall Street Journal’s website, like several other western publications, was blocked due to its tendency to occasionally restrict print news that the communist party deems unfit to print. I tried to connect online to The Wall Street Journal and quickly discovered the site was indeed blocked. CCTV, apparently, had not gotten the word.
FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
