27 May 2008
U.S.-China Relations Show Progress
China has enormous potential to enhance peace, stability, prosperity
Washington -- The U.S. approach to building cooperation with China and influencing the choices its leaders are making about its role in the world is a long-term task, but respect, perseverance and patience are paying off, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte says.
"In recent years we have made some progress in our relations with China, and I would say that the trend lines are positive," he says. "China is an emerging great power with enormous potential to enhance prospects for peace, stability, prosperity and human freedom in Asia and around the world."
Negroponte cited China's support and leadership in trying to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons development program; its support for sanctions against North Korea and Iran; its meaningful talks with the Burmese regime and the democratic opposition and ethnic minority groups; its support for peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region; and China's assurances to its neighbors that its rise is peaceful and will benefit the entire region.
"This facilitates our efforts to urge China to exercise leadership in addressing regional problems, particularly with regard to the Korean Peninsula and Burma, and in pursuing dialogue with Taiwan," he said in recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In addition, China is playing an important role in the eventual establishment of a framework for peace and security in Northeast Asia. "Such a framework would complement our enduring alliances in Asia," he said.
Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said that in Washington there is a view held by some that the United States and China are fated to confrontation. "In this view, the great struggle of our time will be between liberal democracies like the United States and autocracies like China and Russia. But I believe this view is mistaken."
"For all of China's emerging power and all of America's great strength, neither of us can solve the problems we both confront without the other," Biden said.
Senator Richard Lugar, the senior Republican on the committee, said that China and the United States clearly have sharp differences on many issues such as human rights, democratization, religious freedom, protection of intellectual property rights and economic issues.
"Unfortunately, the United States' debate on contentious issues between our two countries is often oversimplified, parsed out in sound bites, omitting realities of the broader trade and economic interaction. China's rapid economic growth and industrialization are obliterating old ways of thinking about the global economy," Lugar said.
Lugar said progress has been made in some areas; most of these issues are unlikely to be resolved in the short run.
Biden said that the committee, over the coming months, will hold a series of hearings on U.S.-China relations viewed from different perspectives. This hearing was more general in focus, but others will deal with specific aspects of China's emergence, he said.
On Taiwan, Negroponte said the United States is encouraged by a recent positive meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Taiwan's vice president-elect, Vincent Siew. However, he said the United States still is concerned by China's continued military buildup along the Taiwan Strait, and has encouraged the Chinese leadership to show more flexibility in their approach to cross-strait relations.
"We do not support Taiwan independence. We want cross-strait differences to be resolved peacefully and according to the wishes of the people on both sides of the strait," he said.
China increasingly is becoming integrated into international economic and political institutions, and its ability to contribute to global stability is growing, he said. "Beijing's traditional principle of noninterference is giving way to diplomatic interventions that highlight China's stated ambition, to be seen as a responsible major power," he said.
Negroponte said that China has been supportive of a number of U.S. initiatives in the U.N. Security Council. Both the United States and China are permanent members of the council, and each has veto power. But China has supported sanctions against Iran and North Korea, and a joint U.N. and African Union peacekeeping mission for Darfur.
"China's support for these positions would have been hard to imagine several years ago," he said.
Negroponte said China must continue to respect individual freedoms and greater political liberalization. "It is also the best way for China to achieve long-term stability," he said. "China will earn the international respect it seeks by guaranteeing all of its citizens internationally recognized rights."
