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 21^st 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.  

Russian leaders are grappling with difficult and complex foreign policy choices on Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. and NATO military exit, a Stanford expert says.

"Russian policy in Afghanistan is at a crossroads, with worsening relations with the West looming against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict," wrote Kathryn Stoner, a Stanford political scientist and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, in a new article in the journal Asian Survey.

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s left haunting memories in the minds of Russian policymakers, "who have no interest in being trapped again in a war they can neither afford nor win," wrote Stoner in the article, titled "Russia’s 21st Century Interests in Afghanistan: Resetting the Bear Trap."

The Soviet-Afghan War from 1979 to 1989 was called a "Bear Trap" by some Western media, and thought to be a contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Power vacuum perils

Stoner said that as the U.S. pullout deadline approached in December 2014, Russia was critical of the arguably hasty retreat of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Some troops remained behind in an advisory role.

As she described it, Moscow's leaders thought a sudden power vacuum would leave a variety of threats within Afghanistan – weapons proliferation, corrupt police, a rising drug trade and radical Islamists, for example.

Of the latter, recent news reports indicate the Islamic State group has established a presence in Afghanistan; Russia has urged the United Nations Security Council to stop its expansion.

"On the ISIS vs. Taliban question," Stoner said in an interview, "it is a question of the lesser of two evils, of course, from a Russian perspective."

For Russia, she said, the Islamic State group may be more undesirable than the Taliban in Afghanistan because they are attempting to recruit young Russian Muslims to their cause, which could breed homegrown terrorists who return to Russia with the group's message and training.

"The other issue is that although Afghanistan was brutally ruled under the Taliban, it was more stable than it is currently. Still, neither group is pro-foreigner or pro-Russian especially," she added.

As Stoner wrote, in the interest of stability Russia has expressed possible support for moderate rank-and-file Taliban to be included in the Afghan government.

"Russian leaders point to the fact that heroin trafficking was less under the Taliban than in the past five years under the U.S./NATO coalition," noted Stoner, adding that narcotics were reaching the Russian population.

Meanwhile, Russia is exploring the possibility of moving additional troops to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as re-equipping those countries' armies to provide a "defensive zone in Central Asia against Afghan radical or narcotics incursions into the Russian heartland," according to Stoner.

The ideal Russian scenario in Afghanistan would have been for President Hamid Karzai to stay in power and a government of national reconciliation formed with moderate Taliban, she said. That scenario, however, has failed, and Russia will have to cope with an Afghanistan without Karzai.

Choices and a crossroads

Stoner believes Russia is faced with three choices. One is to return to its 1990s policy and support an updated version of the Northern Alliance as a way to create a northern buffer zone that protects its Central Asian allies from any incursions from Afghanistan.

The second is to cooperate with the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, and perhaps a moderate Taliban, in governing Afghanistan.

"The latter strategy could have the advantage of reducing narcotics trafficking, but it risks allowing Afghanistan to again become a haven for radical Islamic terrorists," said Stoner.

Russia clearly does not want another front to open in its war on radical Islam – the Chechen conflict has already produced enough grief for the Russian population and its leadership, she noted.

A third option for the Russians, according to Stoner, would be to continue some degree of cooperation with Western forces in creating a protective zone around Central Asia. The problem for the Russians is that this might bring about a "counterbalancing strategy on the part of China, which would not fit with Russia's strategy."

Besides, it's a long shot, she added, as Russia's renewed conflict with the West over Ukraine has deeply damaged its ability to  cooperate with Western powers in and around Afghanistan.

"There are few reliable indications of which path Russia is likely to choose," wrote Stoner. "One can discern elements of each scenario in Russian statements and actions in Afghanistan."

She explained that Russian leaders want to reassert their country's prominence on the global stage.

"In many ways, Russia is resurgent internationally. It has emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union not as the superpower it was, but as a formidable regional power that cannot be discounted," said Stoner.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia seeks to command the respect of the international community, though it can no longer rely on brute military force. Rather, it must today depend on adroit diplomatic or strategic moves to "act as facilitator or spoiler in many parts of the world," she wrote.

This Russian resurgence, she said, has played a role in its policy choices in Afghanistan since 2001. "It wants influence, but not ownership, in Central Asia, and ultimately in Afghanistan," she wrote.

As a result, Russia will act on the margins of the Afghanistan issue, leveraging its power to protect its own security interests in Central Asia.

"Russia has much to lose and little to gain by doing much more. For this reason, Russian policymakers are in the awkward position of not having wanted the Americans to come to Central Asia, but now, not wanting them to leave," she wrote.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.