US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added a brief stop in China to her Asia-Pacific tour that began yesterday, a 13-day trip that aims to bolster ties to a region increasingly under China’s shadow.
The US State Department described her detour to Hainan Island on Saturday as a simple courtesy to Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo (戴秉國), a key figure in managing the strained US-China relationship.
Clinton’s trip began yesterday with a stop in Hawaii to meet Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, followed by visits to Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia.
Built around this week’s East Asia Summit in Hanoi, the tour is designed to demonstrate US commitment to the region in a climate of, at times, tense relations between China and the US and some of its own neighbors.
Washington and Beijing have clashed this year over the value of the Chinese yuan, US arms sales to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama’s February meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
Washington and Beijing are looking for ways to calm tensions ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) visit to the White House in January, a date that gives both sides an interest in resolving problems.
“My sense is that once the Chinese seriously began to focus on the January Hu Jintao visit, everybody decided that you have to have a successful summit and you can’t do that with the edges of your relationship as frayed as they are,” said Jack Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington.
Pritchard said both sides wanted to steady the relationship and the Chinese “probably are not looking at it [Clinton’s trip] as touching base with all the nations that encircle China.”
In addition to Clinton’s Asia-Pacific swing, Obama will travel next month to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.
“Chinese diplomacy has been really ham-fisted this year. They have come across as brash, bullying, selfish,” a US congressional aide said on condition of anonymity.
“It’s been a tough year for them diplomatically and I am told that they have made a decision ... that we need to get back on the bicycle and start pedaling again and the way to do that is to have a successful meeting with Obama,” the aide said.
Michael Fullilove, an analyst at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, said Obama had begun to adopt a somewhat more muscular stance toward China.
“To some extent after the Dalai Lama and Taiwan [issues], you saw Obama push back a bit,” Fullilove said. “On the Chinese side, I think they are getting the sense that there is some steel there.”
US officials suggested they were not looking to make waves with China on Clinton’s trip, hoping to use the leverage from Beijing’s desire for a smooth Hu visit to extract some movement from the Chinese without any public spats.
“I think we all understand the stakes involved and the importance for a positive, constructive and, frankly, a relationship with a degree of confidence between the United States and China going forward,” US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told reporters on Tuesday.
“Most everyone in Asia appreciates the need for a cool-headed, constructive diplomacy between the United States and China in the current environment,” Campbell said.
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