p**********d
发帖数: 7918 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/asia/20assess.html?hp
January 19, 2011
Subtle Signs of Progress in U.S.-China Relations
By MICHAEL WINES
WASHINGTON — The Chinese have striven to lend this week’s state visit by
President Hu Jintao the aura of a fresh start, from feel-good displays of
friendly Chinese in Times Square to a Washington newspaper insert that
declared on Wednesday that his meeting with President Obama could open a new
chapter in a relationship between the world’s two economic giants that had
been troubled.
That much is doubtful. But for the first time in months, the two leaders may
at least have started reading from the same book.
After a 2010 notable mostly for Chinese acrimony toward the United States
and its policies, Mr. Hu came to the White House saying not only that
constructive relations between the two powers were essential, but also
offering some modest concessions to demonstrate it. In a joint statement
issued Wednesday, the Chinese for the first time expressed public concern
over North Korea’s recent disclosure of a modern uranium-enrichment plant,
a small but ardently sought step in American efforts to press Kim Jong-il to
roll back his nuclear weapons program.
More surprisingly, perhaps, Mr. Hu said at a White House news conference
that the China “recognizes and also respects the universality of human
rights,” a palpable shift for a government that has staged a two-year
crackdown on internal dissent and imprisoned a Nobel laureate. Until
Wednesday, recognizing credos like democracy and human rights as “universal
values” had been all but taboo in the Chinese political discourse,
although China has signed the United Nations convention in which the
principle of universal human rights is enshrined.
Words, of course, are easier than deeds. “I don’t equate new rhetoric with
new reality in China,” said Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution
scholar who was President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser on
China issues. “But at least new rhetoric is better than nothing.”
So, in a sense, were the events of Wednesday. Neither side made any
significant progress, much less any breakthrough, on the larger problems
that have bedeviled relations ever since Mr. Obama made his state visit to
Beijing in November 2009. On the American side, that includes revaluing
China’s currency, leveling the playing field for American investors in
China and establishing a serious discourse between the nations’ militaries.
For the Chinese, the biggest thorns include American arms sales to Taiwan,
its continued support of the Dalai Lama and what a Chinese journalist at
Wednesday’s news conference called “strategic mistrust” — the fear that
the United States is seeking to encircle China and suppress its rise.
Still, each side came away from the meeting with something it could point to
as an accomplishment, however modest.
The White House had set out to keep relations from sliding even further
downhill, and to establish a more personal relationship with Mr. Hu that
could sustain ties during the next two years, when the political realities
of choosing leaders in both countries will work against any significant
improvement.
Mr. Obama appears to have gotten that. For his part, Mr. Hu was, by American
accounts, fixated on engineering a state visit that would portray China as
an equal partner with the United States, and China’s president as a
successful, internationally recognized statesman. He got that, too.
Both leaders should also reap domestic political benefits from their meeting
. Mr. Hu’s enhanced stature, American analysts say, should help him tamp
down political forces that have driven a more aggressive foreign policy and
hamstrung relations with the United States and China’s Pacific neighbors in
the last year.
Mr. Hu and China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, “realize this assertiveness based
in the last year on nationalism and the belief that the U.S. is declining
has gotten them into deep trouble,” said Joseph S. Nye Jr., the dean at the
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a State Department and Pentagon
official in the Carter and Clinton administrations. Mr. Nye was in
Washington for a luncheon with Mr. Hu at the State Department. “They think
a summit which could be played as a success can give them ammunition to
quiet down this rumbling below in the ranks.”
For his part, Mr. Obama comes away from the visit with a new reputation for
toughness in his China policy, something that is likely to please
conservatives and some liberals alike.
In the last week, the president’s cabinet members loosed a fusillade of
speeches intended to lay out the administration’s differences with Beijing
for all to see. And at Wednesday’s public sessions with Mr. Hu, Mr. Obama
repeatedly raised concerns about China’s currency, its foot-dragging in
stopping the pirating of American software and other intellectual property,
its poor human rights record and, boldest of all, China’s refusal to talk
to the Dalai Lama.
Critics on Mr. Obama’s left have accused him of soft-pedaling human rights
since the start of his presidency, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton played down the need to raise rights concerns in public during a
visit to Beijing. This time, Mr. Obama invited human rights advocates to the
White House for a meeting on China in the days before Mr. Hu’s arrival,
and raised the issue from the beginning on Wednesday, in his remarks
welcoming Mr. Hu to the White House.
Mr. Obama also had a “very serious” discussion on human rights with Mr. Hu
during a private dinner in the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Lieberthal said.
“The administration feels this is about managing a very complicated and
very important relationship — and I stress ‘managing,’ ” he said. “This
is not a relationship where everything is going to come out right.”
Whether baby steps on human-rights language and other issues will show
staying power after Mr. Hu returns to Beijing and the cauldron of domestic
politics is an open question, Mr. Lieberthal and other experts said. But for
now, “progress is progress,” said Nina Hachigian, a veteran analyst on
United States-China relations at the Center for American Progress, a
Democratic-leaning research group. “And even if it’s incremental progress,
it’s better than no progress at all.” | p**********d
发帖数: 7918 | 2 五毛小將們聽好了，今後官方的論調是“尊重和承認人權的普適性。”
想好自己怎麼打自己耳光吧，不過你們也已經習慣了，倒是。
new
had
【在 p**********d 的大作中提到】
: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/asia/20assess.html?hp
: January 19, 2011
: Subtle Signs of Progress in U.S.-China Relations
: By MICHAEL WINES
: WASHINGTON — The Chinese have striven to lend this week’s state visit by
: President Hu Jintao the aura of a fresh start, from feel-good displays of
: friendly Chinese in Times Square to a Washington newspaper insert that
: declared on Wednesday that his meeting with President Obama could open a new
: chapter in a relationship between the world’s two economic giants that had
: been troubled.
|
|
