As US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, joined by a large group of US officials, met with senior Chinese leaders in Beijing this week, they faced an American-Chinese relationship rived by a strategic rivalry not seen before, a situation that neither side appears in the mood to improve.
Complicating matters is the one-man leadership style of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who appears to make the big decisions on national security — meant to challenge US primacy in the Asia-Pacific region and establish a China-centric alternative — without much consultation with others, Chinese and US experts said.
China’s push against two of the US’ major allies, Japan and South Korea; its thrust into the South China Sea, which threatens freedom of navigation; and the sudden imposition of an air defense zone near Japan all reflect Xi’s thinking about China’s rightful place in Asia, analysts said.
Both China and the US had set low expectations for progress on the issues scheduled to be discussed at the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, intended as a venue for the two sides to hash out difficult topics.
The best prospect seemed to be an effort toward a bilateral investment treaty that China agreed to start negotiations on last year.
Toward that end, Chinese Vice Minister of Finance Zhu Guangyao (朱光耀) said on Monday that talks would begin soon on lifting restrictions on foreign investments in both countries, such as cutting back on the national security reviews Washington conducts before approving big Chinese investments in the US.
DIVISIONS APPARENT
In one critical area — cyberespionage — there is unlikely to be any real discussion. After the US Department of Justice won the indictments of five members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on charges of cybertheft in May, China suspended a working group that had held only two sessions.
The atmosphere between Beijing and Washington has deteriorated to such an extent since Xi and US President Barack Obama met at the Sunnylands estate in California a year ago that even pressuring a nuclear North Korea, the one area they agreed to pursue at that time, has almost vanished from the agenda, US officials said.
The Chinese decided to link the question of how to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons to other big issues, such as China’s territorial ambitions in the East and South China seas, and several months ago, the officials said, Beijing suspended working-level meetings on that matter.
In a sign of the divisions, Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai (崔天凱) told an audience in Washington that persuading North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, at the behest of the US, was “mission impossible.”
On the Chinese side, Xi is making decisions based on his interpretation of “China’s national greatness and military effectiveness,” said Shi Yinhong (時殷弘), a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China in Beijing who has advised the government on occasion.
“Power concentrated in one man’s hand means foreign policy will be decided by his strategic personality and his political beliefs,” Shi said.
Xi’s sense that Obama is a lame-duck president propels his inclination to “push and push again” in the South and East China seas, Shi said.
Xi reigns supreme on the standing committee, which consists of the seven top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and none of the others appear to be involved with foreign policy, Shi said.
XI’S LEADERSHIP STYLE
Xi almost certainly takes the advice of the military, but the “decision is his making,” Shi said.
Another Chinese academic, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, described Xi as the “emperor” on the standing committee, with “six assistants.”
Xi’s leadership style stands in contrast to that of his predecessor, former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), who made decisions collectively with the standing committee, the academic said. Unlike Xi’s, Hu’s connections with the Chinese military were fairly distant.
Senior Obama administration officials say they believe that Xi made all the major strategic decisions since the Sunnylands meeting virtually single-handedly.
These include the imposition of the air defense zone in air space claimed by Japan in November last year and the dispatch of a billion-dollar oil rig belonging to a Chinese energy company into waters also claimed by Vietnam in May, they said.
Xi’s top-down style makes navigating Beijing’s opaque bureaucratic system even more hazardous for the Obama administration. A much ballyhooed national security commission set up by Xi has turned out to be focused more on domestic policy than on foreign, Chinese analysts said.
In the usual pecking order, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎), a former foreign minister and former ambassador to the US, would serve as Xi’s chief foreign policy adviser. That was certainly the case when Dai Bingguo (戴秉國) held the job under Hu and Dai became the go-to person for many US officials, Chinese and US analysts said.
A NEW PECKING ORDER
However, Yang apparently does not have a close relationship with Xi. Instead, Xi appears to rely on Wang Huning (王滬寧), director of policy research of the office of the CCP’s Central Committee, who accompanies the president almost everywhere and almost always sits at the head of Chinese delegations, as he did during Xi’s visit to the South Korean capital last week.
The policy preferences of Wang — whom one Chinese academic referred to as “merely a desk officer” — are little known. When Wang served as a more junior officer he was careful to avoid shaking hands with US officials and cautious about talking to them, a former senior US official said.
Navy Admiral Sun Jianguo (孫建國) appears to have the blessing of Xi, or at least the top levels of government, to communicate the president’s ideas about an Asia-only regional security arrangement that would replace the 60-year system of US alliances, said Evans Revere, a former US principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia.
Sun, who is deputy chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, delivered a stirring rendition of Xi’s ideas for a new order in Asia, with China at the center, before an international audience in Beijing last month.
There is little chance that the current negative tone between Beijing and Washington will change much as a result of the dialogue this week, or even before Obama leaves the White House, Shi said.
“I don’t think either side has the intention of reversing the trends,” he said.
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