If the second-term Bush administration has had one consistent message for China, it is that a country moving rapidly towards global superpower status has international obligations and responsibilities that cannot be shirked.
This is a polite way of saying: "You may be the big new kid on the block -- but don't mess with us."
In its responses to Washington, as seen during a recent visit to Beijing by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, China has demonstrated firmness but also pragmatism and a growing diplomatic subtlety. That will doubtless be on display again during President Hu Jintao's (
While both countries remain deeply wary of the other's longer-term intentions and ambitions, at present they are watching, learning and trying to rub along. The 21st century clash of titans so widely anticipated in both east and west appears to be something for the future.
China has been working closely with Washington in the so-called "six-party talks" over North Korea. Its interest in maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula, especially in terms of containing or eliminating Pyongyang's supposed nuclear weapons capability, coincides with that of the US.
On issues, such as the diplomatic stand-off with Iran, China supported the US-driven decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Tehran to the UN Security Council over its suspect nuclear activities. But it has made plain it would be reluctant to endorse punitive economic sanctions, let alone the use of force against Iran's nuclear facilities.
China is even patching up relations with Japan, an old wartime adversary and close US ally. This week will see the highest level meeting between the two sides since relations deteriorated last October over a war shrines dispute.
China's practical approach to relations with the US and regional neighbors reflects its top current priority, which is domestic: Build the national economy and maintain annual growth rates of about 9 percent.
Projections published this month in the China Modernization Report 2006 revealed the extent of Beijing's ambition. The report foresees the end of poverty -- as officially measured -- by 2050 and a rapid rise in living standards and incomes.
Yet another report, published this week, promised increased spending on schools, healthcare and agriculture in poor rural areas where there have been thousands of protests in recent years against Communist Party corruption, land grabs and pollution.
China's confident future image of itself is of a country that is one of the most advanced in the world, industrially, technologically and scientifically -- and one that in due course, if it wishes, will be able to challenge and best the US hegemon. Until then, it is biding its time.
For its part, the US is increasingly focusing on this longer-term challenge. Congressmen recently warned that China's economy could out-perform the US by 2050. That may be one reason why US President George W. Bush has begun to stress the need to invest more in science, technology and education.
The Pentagon has also concluded that China, alone among foreign powers, could one day challenge the US militarily. And as the US Treasury already knows only too well, the US' deficit-financed economy is already largely underwritten by Chinese capital.
Yet out of the blue, or out of left field as the Americans say, a single issue has suddenly exploded onto the US-China agenda, threatening to upset an otherwise carefully managed relationship.
Cutting away the diplomatic flummery, it has exposed the sharp cultural differences between the two countries. The issue is censorship.
Enormous exception has been taken in the US to revelations that leading Internet service providers such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco Systems have submitted to Chinese government-imposed restrictions on free speech and access to information -- and have allegedly facilitated the surveillance and arrest of Chinese critics of the Beijing government.
At a congressional hearing last week, the companies were subjected to fierce criticism.
"I can't understand how your corporate executives sleep at night," Democratic Representative Tom Lantos said.
A string of other politicians lamented a lack of fidelity to America's long-protected tradition of free speech and stressed the incompatibility of free enterprise and "tyranny."
The companies pointed out that in order to do business in China, it was necessary to comply with Chinese regulations. But that defense only exasperated their critics and highlighted how relatively closed a society China remains, for all its economic vitality and dreams of future prosperity.
Yet greater US-China familiarity, and a developing working relationship, may be having an effect even in this sensitive area.
Almost simultaneously with the US row, a debate over censorship erupted in China itself.
It was sparked by an unusual demarche by party elders who denounced the authorities' closure of a popular anti-establishment magazine, Freezing Point, and railed against official curbs on the media. One of the elders was a former political secretary to Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
A possibly startled Hu subsequently ordered that Freezing Point be allowed to reopen. And while strict controls remain, Chinese officials concede that they face an impossible task in trying to control all flows of information.
The censorship row exposed how very different American and Chinese societies are -- and yet how much closer they may become. In that thought lies hope that these two giants of the 21st century are not inevitably doomed to confrontation.
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