[This piece originally appeared at Asia Times Online on June 6, 2013. It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]
The expert consensus is that the Barack Obama-Xi Jinping summit at
Sunnylands, California is something of a relationship-building
nothingburger. The summit was arranged on short notice, there is no
detailed agenda, and the most likely result is that Obama and Xi will
get to know each other better and therefore communicate more
effectively.
In fact, the main concern of Western adversaries of the People's
Republic of China (PRC), from dragon-slayers on the right to human
rights crusaders on the left, seems to be that President Obama will
surrender to Xi Jinping's burly charm and slacken in
his resolve to twist the panda's testicles.
From the right, the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Auslin wrote
an op-ed on the Foreign Policy magazine website asserting that the
summit shouldn't even have happened.
... [S]summits like this one should be reserved for friends and allies ...
There are almost no shared values between Beijing and Washington, and
little complementary policy. The Chinese engage with the United States
because it allows them to play the charade of backslapping, while
sidestepping tough issues. Unfortunately, Washington finds itself in a
dialogue dependency trap ... [1]
Writing at the Asia Society's ChinaFile blog, Professor Andrew Nathan
also expressed his concern that excessive comity might break out:
I hope our president avoids signing on to "a new type of great power
relationship." This is Chinese code for the US preemptively yielding to
what China views as its legitimate security interests. These interests
are quite expansive - acceptance of the Chinese regime as it is, human
rights violations and all; acceptance of China's territorial demands in
the East and South China Seas; deference to China's views on the rules
governing international trade, currency, climate change, humanitarian
intervention, and so on ... I think a new equilibrium between American
and Chinese interests will have to be achieved by painstaking work on
concrete issues over a long period of time, often in a contentious
environment. [2]
For good measure, Foreign Policy blog's
Isaac Fish
contributed a post hailing Michelle Obama's non-appearance at the
summit, only expressing regret that her absence was officially
attributable to obligations surrounding end-of-school for the children
in Washington, and not an overt snub to Xi's wife to shame her for her
past role as PLA chanteuse.
It is unlikely that President Obama will conduct his meeting with Xi
like a middle manager briskly interviewing an unqualified and
unattractive job applicant over a latte in the local Starbucks,
impatiently checking his Blackberry during the pitch and abruptly
leaving to get his car washed.
However, skeptics should be pleased that the United States holds the
advantage at this particular juncture of the evolving US-China
relationship and is probably prepared to use it.
The "pivot" - also known as "the rebalancing" - is working, albeit in unexpected ways.
The US exercise in "confrontainment" has not produced a united, US-led
coalition compelling the PRC to upgrade its adherence to Western
universal norms in return for the right to continued full membership in
the community of nations.
Instead, Japan, under the rule of the PRC-hostile nationalist Shinzo
Abe, is working to co-opt the rhetoric and goals of the pivot to create a
favored place for Japan as the crucial economic and security component
in an alliance of Asian democracies confronting China, thereby spooking
the PRC and also working against the US hegemony in Asia which the pivot
was intended to prolong.
Abe is doing the heavy lifting in assembling a Great Wall of Asian
democracies containing China, roaming Asia in search of allies (and for
the aid/trade/investment opportunities needed to provide some long-term
fuel for his program of economic rebirth, "Abenomics").
To China's chagrin, Abe appears to be quite successful in getting open
commitments to enhanced economic and security competition with China's
regional adversaries (the Philippines, Vietnam), and conducting high
profile engagement with erstwhile PRC ally/satellite Myanmar.
The nastiest shock for PRC, however, was the open tilt by India away
from China and to Japan. Although Premier Li Keqiang made India the
destination for his first overseas trip after assuming office, his visit
was overshadowed by a flare-up in border tensions in Ladakh and Indian
disgruntlement over China's large surplus in bilateral trade.
Shortly thereafter, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh paid a working
visit to Tokyo, and his rhetoric went considerably beyond the
triangulating rhetoric usually associated with Indian foreign policy to a
full-throated endorsement of the special India-Japan relationship.
An Asia in which the Philippines, Vietnam, and India might be following
the lead of Japan in an anti-China coalition is not just a matter of
diplomatic embarrassment and potential (if remote) military hazard to
the PRC.
There is the matter of the competing trade blocs: the US-led "Trans
Pacific Partnership", the "high standards" pact that does not include
the PRC, and the ASEAN-based and China-promoted alternative - the
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, which has a more
hospitable attitude toward mixed economies and state-owned enterprises
and does not make a fetish out of the extraterritorial intellectual
property and legal rights of multinational corporations as the TPP does;
nor does it include the United States.
Japan has seized on TPP as a crucial element in its strategy to push the
PRC toward the economic sidelines and assert a more central role for
Japan, as a backgrounder in India's Financial Express pointed out:
From its start, the TPP was more than a regional trading arrangement.
The US has not shied away from allowing it to be viewed as a response to
China's growing economic presence in the Asia-Pacific. Abe has noted
that the TPP's impact extends beyond the economic sphere. Participation
in the TPP will allow Japan to create a "new economic order" with the
US, creating new rules and ensuring stability in the Asia-Pacific
region. Importantly, Abe sees the creation of this new order and its new
rules as important steps in achieving Japan's national interests. Given
that Japan is currently embroiled in a territorial dispute with China
over the Senkaku islands, joining the TPP can also be seen as an attempt
on the part of Japan to counter increasingly assertive China. ...
On the one hand, regional convergence based on the RCEP model will
facilitate China's rise as the dominant Asian power. Conversely, a
TPP-driven convergence will allow the US to re-assert itself as the
dominant power in Asia. [3]
Since the inner workings of the TPP negotiations are notoriously opaque,
it is not clear that Japan's full participation in TPP negotiations
will give it the power - which is theoretically the prerogative of other
members - to blackball new applicants. However, given Abe's China
strategy, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the ability to apply a
chokehold to China's TPP plans figured in Japan's decision to join
negotiations.
At the same time, Japan is also a participant in the RCEP talks.
Perhaps equally fatally for the PRC's hopes, India, as befits its
ambitions if not its location, is also a partner in the TPP talks as
well as the RCEP talks.
If Japan and India combine to call for the RCEP to meet the same
standards of the TPP, they have enough economic and geopolitical clout
to make the TPP negotiations become the de facto standard. The RCEP -
and the PRC - can languish on the sidelines.
Sidelining China and allowing Japan to occupy a central position among
the smaller Asian maritime democracies - in essence, acting as a big
frog in a smaller pond - is a good thing for Abe, but not necessarily
for the United States, which will find itself crowding in the smaller
pond it will have to share with graying, economically shaky Japan.
With conditions tending towards the unfavorable in Asia, and Japan's
independent foreign policy whittling away at US claims to hegemony, the
PRC's alternative is to play the US card and persuade the United States
there are sound geopolitical advantages in restraining Japan,
admonishing India, and allowing China some advantage in its myriad
territorial and economic disputes.
In recent days, China has made several conciliatory moves: it sent a
high-level delegation to the Shangri La defense ministers gab fest in
Singapore to challenge the framing that the PRC is a bunch of
confrontational knuckleheads on regional security and territorial
issues. The PRC was determined to engage, as Reuters reported in "China
turns on the charm at regional security forum":
[T]he charm offensive by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers,
less than a week before Chinese President Xi Jinping meets US President
Barack Obama for an informal summit, appeared to be designed to tone
down the recent assertiveness by emphasizing cooperation and discussion
...
[A] senior US official accompanying Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to the
forum saw a big change in the Chinese delegation. "Last year China had a
very, very small contingent, a relatively junior-ranking contingent.
This year they came in force ... and have been very active in the
panels," said the official. "That's very, very good. We want everybody
to engage." [4]
Then there was some discreet groveling on the issue of the Trans Pacific Partnership, via People's Daily:
China has been following the talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) and hopes for more transparency in the discussions, Foreign
Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Friday.
Hong's remarks came after the US Under Secretary of Commerce for
International Trade, Francisco J Sanchez, said the United States
welcomes China to join the TPP. ...
Hong said China is open-minded about cooperation initiatives that are
conducive to economic integration and common prosperity in the
Asia-Pacific region, including the TPP and the RCEP. [5]
Add to that conciliatory noises on the vexing issue of North Korea via a
leak to Reuters designed to communicate that the Chinese leadership got
tough with North Korea's envoy when he showed up in Beijing end-May:
Beijing tried to convince Pyongyang to stop its nuclear and missile tests ...
China has grown increasingly frustrated with Pyongyang. It agreed to new
UN sanctions after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test in February, and
Chinese banks have curbed business with their North Korean counterparts
in the wake of US sanctions on the country's main foreign exchange bank.
A former senior US official said Beijing's insistence that North Korea
halt testing would be in line with recent signs it was running out of
patience with Pyongyang.
"What I've heard from talking to Chinese officials and American
officials who are talking to them is that top Chinese officials now
emphasize that the principal goal is to terminate the nuclear weapons
program of North Korea," the ex-official said. [6]
And immediately prior to President Xi's arrival in the United States:
A US businessman who was unable to leave China for nearly five years has
returned to his home in the US. Hu Zhicheng was detained in China in
2008 when a former business partner accused him of commercial theft. ...
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters that Mr Hu
had been restricted from leaving China because of an ongoing lawsuit.
"Now these restrictions have been cancelled according to legal
proceedings. The relevant judicial cases are being handled," he said.
[7]
All these initiatives add up to a message of conciliation from the
PRC to the United States.
Are these simply the cynical machinations of a hostile regime determined
to disguise its motives and shield its actions? A low-cost diplomatic
strategy to grease the wheels for an otherwise meaningless friendly
photo-op with President Obama to boost Xi Jinping's domestic stature?
Or is Xi prepared to execute as well as offer some genuine concessions
in order to obtain, if not the unlikely "US China partnership", more of a
tilt toward China and away from the pivot coalition in Pacific affairs?
Probably a key indicator will be how the "cyber-outrage" narrative
plays out.
The United States has been methodically hyping the Chinese cyber-threat
since November 2011, systematically escalating the attributions, the
accusations, and the anxiety from initial suspicions of non-state
hacking maybe originating in China to current declarations that the
Chinese government and military execute a massive state-directed hacking
program against US commercial, governmental, and military assets.
A climax of sort will be reached in Sunnylands when President Obama
officially gets into Xi Jinping's grill and provides a dossier of
alleged Chinese cyber-outrages and the costs they have inflicted on US
businesses.
The US cyber-position is rife with contradictions, starting with the
fact that the United States - with its technological assets, its central
position in the world communications infrastructure, the National
Security Agency's pressing need to build server farms the size of the
Astrodome to store the petabytes of data it has accidentally stumbled
across (which, by US law, is supposed to exclude communications inside
the United States), and the fact that the United States followed up its
proud record of nuclear first use at Hiroshima to become the first use
state for cyber-weapons with Stuxnet, the attack on Iranian centrifuge
facilities - is the king of covert cyber-activity.
As Kenneth Lieberthal of Brookings put it:
President Obama needs to be sensitive to the reality that, from a
Chinese perspective, the United States nearly owns the cyber arena.
America has the most advanced tools and capabilities, and the Chinese
political and financial systems largely run on American software. China
assumes the US uses that huge capability to its advantage. That is a
perception that will be part of the equation in any serious cyber
discussion. [8]
One has to wonder if America's "China cyber-threat" posture has
something to do with the realization that the Chinese government had
allowed the yuan to appreciate to its natural value and a replacement
threat narrative was urgently needed to keep the onus on the PRC as a
rogue state.
Today, the traditional narrative that "Chinese companies beat out US
companies because of an unfair exchange rate advantage" has been
superseded by the borderline racist "Chinese companies can't innovate
and can only succeed by stealing US secrets" reboot.
Per NPR:
[I]f Chinese businesses can steal US technology, they can blunt the one
big advantage US companies have in the global economy, which is their
capacity to innovate. It is that spirit that explains the emergence of
US companies like Microsoft, Apple or Google. Such companies, business
experts say, have been far less likely to originate in China, because
the business culture in China does not favor creativity. But they can
always steal the products of US creativity. [9]
Then there are the accusations of military espionage, which lend themselves to even more dire narratives:
Lou Dobbs, CNBC: Remember, a little over a year ago, the Joint Chiefs
made a similar statement, that in certain instances, intrusions in
cyberspace will be considered an act of war against the United States
and will be treated as such. What more ... what in God's name would it
take to create an act of war? You couldn't do this in anything but the
virtual world and have there be any doubt about it. It's an act of war.
[10]
The Obama administration's high-profile jihad against Chinese hacking
would appear to be an exercise in futility from a legal/diplomatic
perspective.
Given the opaque nature of the Internet, it is unlikely that the United
States will ever be able to document Chinese cyber-intrusion to a degree
sufficient for an international commercial tribunal, let alone achieve
the level of proof needed to launch a cyber-attack or cruise missile
under international law. But that's not a bug, it's a feature.
What President Obama is presumably threatening is unilateral,
discretionary, and unattributable off-the-books cyber-retaliation by
executive order for cyber-infractions unless Xi acts on his dossier.
Things get better, in other words, or things get fucked up.
Not exactly the Platonic ideal of justice, but extremely useful to the
United States: it can unilaterally define the crime, attribute it,
demand punishment, and, inevitably, declare that the punishment was
insufficiently thorough and sincere, in a fashion that will be
immediately familiar to anyone who recalls the US campaign against
Iraq's WMDs and Iran's nuclear program.
I expect that, for the sake of improving relations with the United
States, President Xi will consider accepting the dossier and ordering up
a few cyber-sacrifices in the digital arena. Accepting the dossier and
"doing something" will be a relatively momentous step for Xi, if he
undertakes it. If the PRC acknowledges the validity of US
cyber-complaints the issue will never, ever go away (unless a new, even
more effective instrument of China bashing materializes).
I expect Xi will consider assuming his cyber-enforcement duties with the
understanding that nothing he can do will ever be considered sufficient
by the United States, any benefits China gains in return are
conditional, transitory, and subject to immediate revocation, and his
domestic stature will not be enhanced by cooperating with the US on this
issue.
This impression will be reinforced by the reshuffling of President
Obama's national security team. Tom Donilon, President Obama's National
Security Advisor, is stepping down in July and will be replaced by UN
Ambassador and erstwhile candidate for secretary of state Susan Rice.
Donilon was the architect of the "rebalancing" to Asia, or perhaps the
architect of appropriating Kurt Campbell's conception of the pivot,
renaming it, and, in the first months of President Obama's second term,
repurposing it to achieve a measure of meaningful engagement with the
PRC.
Donilon was known for his focus on managing the national security
process and its diverse constituencies to secure a range of foreign
policy options for the White House. Reportedly, he was very keen to
schedule the Sunnylands summit (the first president-to-president meeting
was originally scheduled for the G-20 get together in September), quite
possibly viewing it as his swan song and a chance to bring to fruition
his project for rebalance-driven engagement.
Donilon is probably right to feel a sense of urgency, since his
successor is likely to take a jaundiced view at the possibility of a
constructive and productive relationship between China and the US.
Judging by preliminary reports and her performance at the United
Nations, including her full-throated advocacy of the Libya intervention
and disregard for the consequences for the overseas victims of her
flawed moral certainty, Ambassador Rice is more likely to be an
advocate for a moral interventionist agenda within the bureaucracy and
to the president than an objective facilitator of the national security
process. [11]
Rice will be replaced at the UN by Samantha Power, who is, perhaps, even
more of a moral interventionist (fun fact: Power, an important adviser
to President Obama on foreign policy, had been blocked from a high
position in the Obama administration because she had called Hillary
Clinton a "monster" while acting as an Obama campaign surrogate in 2008.
It would be interesting if the trigger for all this musical-chair
activity was the retirement of Hillary Clinton and the possibility to
finally slot Ms Power into the high foreign policy position it was felt
she deserved. With Rice and Power in the top spots President Obama
originally intended for them, it will be interesting to see how much
influence John Kerry can exert as secretary of state.)
Given staffing trends, President Obama's own inclinations, and its crude
political utility, I expect cyber-indignation to remain at the center
of US China policy.
And I expect that President Xi, cognizant of the fact that he needs some
goodwill from the US, no matter how transitory, will think seriously
about the risky and highly consequential step of validating the US
cyber-threat bugbear.
Notes:
1.
Xi's Not Ready, Foreign Policy, June 4, 2013.
2.
What Should Obama and Xi Accomplish at Their California Summit?, ChinaFile, May 29, 2013.
3.
Where does India stand amid changing Asia-Pacific trade dynamics?, Financial Express, April 4, 2013.
4.
China turns on the charm at regional security forum, Reuters, June 2, 2013.
5.
China hopes for transparent U.S.-led TPP talks, People's Daily Online, June 1, 2013.
6.
China tried to convince North Korea to give up nuclear tests - source, Reuters, June 4, 2013.
7.
US businessman Hu Zhicheng released from China, BBC News, June 5, 2013.
8.
U.S.-China Relations: The Obama-Xi California Summit, Brookings, June 3, 2013.
9.
U.S. Turns Up Heat On Costly Commercial Cybertheft In China, NPR, May 7, 2013.
10.
Dobbs Wants U.S. to Declare War With China for Hacking, C&L, May 28, 2013.
11.
Donilon's Legacy, foreignpolicy.com, June 5, 2013. (Subscription only).
