Will Obama push China harder?

He's been critical of monetary policy and has named human rights defenders to key posts.

from the January 8, 2009 edition

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The administration's vision of managing China's rise as a global power was captured in a December 2005 speech by Robert Zoellick, then-deputy secretary of State (and now president of the World Bank), in which he called on the US to prod China down the road to becoming a "responsible stakeholder" in the international systems that govern global security and the economy.

"It is time to take our policy beyond opening doors to China's membership into the international system," Mr. Zoellick said. "We need to urge China to become a responsible stakeholder in that system."

One area where the US has worked closely with China – and where Obama is expected to continue close engagement – is with North Korea and efforts to dismantle its nuclear program. The six-party talks that Beijing has hosted reached an accord in 2005 under which North Korea would abandon its nuclear programs and give up its nuclear arms. But after many ups and downs, the agreement hit another snag in December over the means of verifying dismantlement.

Negroponte is likely to take up the North Korea stalemate when he visits Beijing, but it will certainly remain a top holdover issue for secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Despite the positive state of US-China relations, other issues besides North Korea – focused on the economy and human rights – are likely to challenge the upward trajectory.

With China's growth rate falling and unemployment of its restive workers rising, Beijing may be even less likely to heed American and international prescriptions for trade and the yuan.

A deteriorating economic picture could also stymie efforts to encourage China to use its close ties to Sudan and Burma (Myanmar) to influence the course of events in those places – in particular in Sudan's Darfur region.

Also looming on the horizon is the quieted but still-unsettled issue of Taiwan – the elephant in the room of US-China relations that some warn is the issue most likely to one day lead to a confrontation between the two powers.

A sudden China-Taiwan crisis could catch the US unawares and lead to a war that neither side wants, argue Richard Bush and Michael O'Hanlon, two scholars from the Brookings Institution in Washington, in their recent book "A War Like No Other." The prudent response, they argue, as China rises to become the world's second global power over the next two decades, is not to go on treating the potential flash point as if it were neatly contained.

Rather, they say, the US must address all issues with China, mindful of the impact on the only contention that could lead to armed conflict, which is Taiwan. (One indication that the incoming administration may be mindful of this perspective is the fact that James Steinberg, a former Brookings colleague expected to be named Mrs. Clinton's deputy at State, says in a praiseworthy blurb for the book that it offers a thoughtful assessment of "one of the most dangerous fault lines in the world today.")

Even on Taiwan, Freeman says, the Chinese leadership is appreciative of how the Bush administration has handled it – and worried about the impact of any change on the sensitive issue from a new American president who is popular with average Chinese.

"You have this uneasy situation for the leadership in which Obama is extremely popular with the rank-and-file Chinese," Freeman says, "but where officials are finding they feel more comfortable with Republicans."

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