US President Barack Obama was to make his first joint public appearance with the Dalai Lama yesterday at the US National Prayer Breakfast on religious freedom, with a possible private meeting with him afterward.
At a time when US-China relations are in relatively good shape, Washington’s latest overture to the Dalai Lama will anger Beijing, given his profile as Tibet’s most visible figure in its struggle for independence.
The Dalai Lama meeting also comes less than two weeks after Obama’s landmark visit to India. This yielded multiple commercial agreements — including on solar energy and nuclear power — a joint communique on Asia-Pacific affairs, including about the future of the South China Sea, and a discussion of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions for a “quadrilateral security dialogue” involving the US, Japan, Australia and India.
The Obama-Modi meeting was closely scrutinized in Beijing. Predictably, it has been criticized in some Chinese quarters, including Xinhua news agency, which dismissed the US-Indian dialogue as a “superficial rapprochement … more symbolic than pragmatic, given their long-standing division.”
Yet, despite the irritation of some in Beijing toward these events, US-China relations remain on at least a modest upswing. This was symbolized during Obama’s visit to China in November last year, when he and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) showed international leadership by announcing a bilateral climate change agreement that could help catalyze a new global treaty later this year.
Moreover, yesterday, on the same day that Obama was to see the Dalai Lama, top US and Chinese military officials were to meet at the Pentagon for Defense Policy Coordination Talks, addressing confidence-building measures including joint training exercises and exchange programs.
While fragility and disagreements remain in bilateral relations, with potential setbacks on the horizon, the outlook for this year is relatively positive. There are multiple reasons for this from the vantage points of Washington and Beijing.
While China continues to build its international influence, it has recently softened its stance on some foreign policy issues. In part, this reflects the influence and changed calculations of Xi, now two years into his presidency, who has gradually extended his writ, including over the military.
In the US context, he has called for a “new type of great power relationship” to avoid any sense of the inevitability of conflict between Beijing and Washington. While this new idea is an audacious goal that is unlikely to be fully realized, it reflects his desire to try to take unnecessary confrontation off the table.
To this end, while assertiveness will not disappear from Chinese policy, partly because of domestic public appetite for it, there has recently been reversion to greater diplomacy and defusing of tension. One example was the decision of the Chinese Ministry of Defense in December last year to hold an unprecedented meeting between the two nations’ defense policy planning staffs. Moreover, a party from Beijing visited Washington last fall to discuss cybersecurity issues — a regular bilateral irritant.
While Washington does not necessarily believe that this conciliatory behavior will last, it does appear to represent a break with the first 18 months of Xi’s presidency, when Beijing’s foreign and military positions and rhetoric were more pugnacious.
This was showcased by the near-collision between a Chinese warship and the USS Cowpens in the South China Sea in December 2013, which then-US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel blamed on “incendiary” and “irresponsible” Chinese behavior, and in August last year, when a Chinese fighter jet carried out what the Pentagon termed a “dangerous intercept” of a US surveillance aircraft, again over the South China Sea.
From Washington’s standpoint, this warming in relations is to be welcomed, especially when crises in the Middle East and Ukraine will continue to receive the bulk of high-level US attention and considerable military resources this year.
While the US’ long-term pivot towards Asia-Pacific will continue, Obama is keen to avoid a major spike in bilateral tensions. Washington will thus seek to avoid too many clear “red lines” in the region to provide greater latitude and to encourage Beijing to the view that the US is not trying to contain a rising China.
Nevertheless, even in this relatively cooperative context, there are still potential icebergs on the horizon that could see a freeze in relations. First, China’s animus toward US sea and air maneuvers near its borders is growing. As with the naval and air incidents near the South China Sea, further (potentially more serious) spats cannot be ruled out this year.
However, perhaps the biggest source of risk lies in relation to Japan, where nationalist Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was re-elected in a landslide victory in December last year. A key part of his conservative agenda of emphasizing Japanese pride in its past is overturning the remaining legal and political underpinning of the nation’s post-war pacifist security identity, so that it can become more actively engaged internationally. This includes building up military capabilities.
This is perceived as a threat in Beijing, exacerbated by Washington’s close security ties with Tokyo. And while no country desires conflict, serious misjudgement by one or more sides cannot be ruled out.
Taken overall, the short-term outlook for China-US relations is relatively positive, despite regular bilateral irritants. Significant downside risks remain, but both Beijing and China appear to have resolved to manage tensions better, while cooperating more in areas, such as climate change, where there are potentially significant overlapping interests.
Andrew Hammond is an associate at the Centre for International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy at the London School of Economics and a former UK Government special adviser.
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