US-China ties

Alexander T.J. Lennon is senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Internatinal Studies (CSIS) and Editor in Chief of the Washington Quarterly.

Deutsche Welle: The Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is going to be party secretary in autumn and president of China next year, just visited Barack Obama in the White House. A simple question: How important is this visit for Barack Obama?

Alexander Lennon: It is somewhat important for Obama. But I think it is more important for the United States to get to meet Xi Jinping. If Obama is reelected in the US, it will become critical to establish a personal relationship with the Chinese leader. I think there are a lot of questions in the US about the new Chinese leadership. There is a lot of uncertainty among china watchers about who Xi Jinping is. He in some ways appears to have risen to power because he did not do anything dramatic. He stayed within the system somewhat. And so there is a lot of uncertainty about, once he gets to the top, what he will do. I should say that there is also a lot of sense in the US that power is diffusing away from centralization in one person. There is a lot of uncertainty about who the other seven members of the politburo are other than the top two, who that will become. Increasingly it seems like those other members of a wider Chinese government are more important than just the one person. So this meeting was important for a starting place with the new government potentially on both sides. But there is a lot of work to be done across a wide range of government levels.

Now the other way around: How important was the visit for Xi Jinping?

I think it is very important for Xi Jinping. I think it is important for him although his priority is clearly development within China. Chinese economic development requires the interaction with international markets. It requires they have a manageable relationship with the US to be able to sustain the pressure put on them for currency adjustment and for other issues that will help a Xi Jinping administration to advance Chinese economic goals. So for him this was really a way to demonstrate his bona fides, or his international credibility as he is beginning to ascend to that leadership position. So I think it was very important.

The relationship between the US and China is going to shape the future. But there is some friction, even though both countries are virtually interdependent. In your eyes: What are the main points of friction?

Interdependence often actually leads to friction. The only question is: What can you do about it, when it gets bad enough. Currency issues is certainly a dominant one. I mean the sense that the Chinese manipulation of its currency to increase jobs within its own country and take them from the outside world is one that is causing a political problem at least, if not an economic problem inside the US. I think the second issue and the main security issue is in the South China Sea - both in the practices of naval operations in that area as well as the increasing assets that China has in that area. And that will continue to be a source of friction between the US and China in general and certainly between the two navies in particular. And the third is on intellectual property issues. That remains something that the US is very focused on; that will continue to be an issue. Beyond those three, I think you will always have political issues that sort of come and go, in particular, high profile dissidents in China, that will remain an issue. But on the policy agenda those three on currency, intellectual property and the South China Sea are the main ones.

This being an election year in the US and this being a transition year in China: Within the political elite in Washington, what is their take on China?

It was interesting if you look back at President Obama's State of the Union address: There is a sense that the political candidates in the republican campaign and on Obama are sort of shifting on the right - to be hard on China. That is something that China in some way expected. In fact, 2008 was the exception to that rule. In 2008, China did not get a lot of criticism for its economic practices. It was not the focus of a lot of the election debate. But in other years it has been that China is in some ways made out to be the bad guy in the economy and can be pressured in the economy. So you saw in the State of the Union address, that Obama had mentioned that he was setting up a task force for currency issues, to try to demonstrate to the American public, at a time when more people than usual are listening to politics, that he was taking these issues seriously. So I think you can see in an election year that there will be a hard line taken against China. The question is: Can any candidate who becomes president put themselves in a box by saying something during the campaign that they can't have enough flexibility to move, once they get into a policy position?

How comfortable is the US with the rise of China? Beijing is always accusing the West in general and the US in particular of trying to contain the rise of China?

There is a lot of nervousness, I think, in the US about the rise of China generally, because there is uncertainty about what China will do with power as it gains it. There are many in the US who believe that China is fundamentally risking being a selfish power. That its development agenda is so imposing, is so difficult for China to manage, that it will do things in order to sustain its economic agenda - that will threaten other countries. Whether it is grabbing access to energy resources; whether it is manipulating currencies in order to attract more jobs to its own country. The sense and the concern in the US is, that China can't just do what is best for the Chinese community, but it has to do it in the context of the global community in which it lives and in which it is rising. So the clearer that China can be as to what its goals are as it goes forward, the more that will end up reassuring the US. But ultimately it is also about keeping China's rise within a system of global interdependence that allows both to function without one hurting the other.

Interview: Matthias von Hein
Editor: Sarah Berning