Obama's mission impossible with China

That's not how it's often seen among China's neighbors, however. Cultivating spheres of cooperation requires mutual trust and respect and a stable economic and security environment. For Asia in recent years, and for the US, too, these elements have often been lacking in the meteoric rise of a new economic superpower without the advantages of transparency, the rule of law, and popular accountability.

China's unprecedented economic growth is not seen as wholly benign. Its economy may well multiply several times between 2000 and 2020. Its foreign-exchanges reserves, meanwhile, are now 14 times larger than a decade ago. China has absorbed most foreign investment dollars in Asia and scooped up natural resources and other industrial materials, while locking up consumer markets with its manufactured goods – effectively shutting out emerging economies in the region.

The democracies on China's periphery, especially Taiwan (which remains under direct military threat from Beijing) but recently South Korea and Thailand as well, feel more palpably than other governments a suspicion and distrust toward Beijing, even as they experience some spillover benefits from one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Meanwhile, China eschews a leadership role for itself, leaving doubts about its intentions as Asia's future dominant power.

A recent survey of Chinese elites at a range of policy institutions reported that the respondents "overwhelmingly rejected" proposals for how China could take on larger international responsibilities, including conflict resolution and regional security commitments. "Almost all of them believe that China should be active internationally, but when asked what role their country could play, over 70 percent thought China's greatest contribution would simply flow from securing China's own stability and development," wrote Brad Glosserman and Scott Snyder in a newsletter of Honolulu's Pacific Forum, an arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Facing the challenge of a resurgent China that eschews international leadership, Obama's search for a working partnership with Beijing is easily frustrated. His appeals for "sharing the burden of leadership" and his invoking the world's expectations about cooperation on global issues such as climate change and nuclear nonproliferation were heard more than once during his meetings in Shanghai and Beijing, though he avoided exhorting his hosts as his predecessors often did.

Yet compared with previous US presidents, the need for cooperation is vastly greater. As Washington's No. 1 creditor with at least $800 billion in US debt, Beijing is now directly concerned with budgetary implications of US domestic programs.

Meanwhile, an unsustainable trade gap needs rebalancing as US unemployment strikes a 26-year high and pressures rise for protecting US manufacturers from mostly Chinese competition.

The "deliverables" may eventually come. But if Obama is to make good on his declaration that he is "America's first Pacific president," he may need to travel across the Pacific more often than the Atlantic and show up in even more unfamiliar places than he has so far.

Julian Baum is a former Beijing correspondent for the Monitor, and a former Taiwan correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

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