US welcomes strong China - Obama

Koji

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BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | US welcomes strong China - Obama
President Barack Obama says the US "does not seek to contain" China's rise as a big player on the world stage.
"The rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations," Mr Obama said in a speech in Japan's capital, Tokyo.
Better US ties with Beijing do not mean a weakening of relations with US allies in the region, he said.
Describing himself as the first "Pacific" US president, he said the US was committed to the area's security.
Mr Obama is now in Singapore, where he is to attend an Asia-Pacific economic summit.
His trade representative Ron Kirk, who is already at the Apec meeting, says the US wants barriers to trade and investment removed to promote an open global trade system.
Mr Obama will round off his week-long Asian tour with stops in China and South Korea.
North Korea talks
Mr Obama told the gathering in Tokyo that Washington's commitment to the region's security was "unshakeable", despite its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the US would pursue "pragmatic co-operation" with Beijing on issues of mutual concern.
He also warned that he would not waver from raising human rights concerns with Beijing, but did not mention specific concerns, such as Tibet.
The US president called for more assistance from China to thwart the ambitions of North Korea, and warned there would be tough, unified action by the US and its Asian partners if Pyongyang failed to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Obama again called on North Korea to return to six-party talks on the issue, adding the US would not be "cowed" by Pyongyang's nuclear threats.
He also called on Asian leaders to pursue balanced economic growth.
'Sustained growth'
On the issue of economic co-operation, Mr Obama challenged Asian countries to break their dependence on exports to the US and to pursue "balanced" and sustainable economic growth.
"We must strengthen our economic recovery, and pursue growth that is both balanced and sustained," he said. "We simply cannot return to the same cycles of boom and bust that led us into a global recession."
He said the US would pursue a new economic strategy that would mean "saving more and spending less".
He urged Asian leaders to break their dependence on exports to the US market and to open up their markets to speed up a global economic recovery.
Mr Obama arrived in Tokyo on Friday and met Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.
The two leaders agreed on the need to renew their countries' strained alliance and pledged to work quickly to resolve a dispute over the US military base in Okinawa.

President Obama's Schedule:

1. Friday 13: Arrived in Japan
2. Saturday 14: To Apec summit in Singapore
3. Sunday 15: Has talks with Russia's President Medvedev before leaving for China
4. Tuesday 17: Summit in Beijing with Chinese President Hu Jintao
5. Wednesday 18: Ends tour in South Korea
 

Jam

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Multiple aspects to this BREAKING :D news, 1. Its just a meet and formal lecture. 2. In Real things are opposite. 3. Obama is the weakest president in all the lineage of last 2 decades.
 

Rage

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Rhetoric. Yet I can't believe people here would consider this as "breaking news".

These statements have been made numerous times in the past: consider for instance Randt's statement to the PRC about welcoming a "strong, peaceful, prosperous China" in 2002. Displayed in all its glittering guerdon on the embassy of China's website in the United States. Yet, we see the United States arming India to the teeth, installing subservient leaders in what is arguably China's strongest ally and a nuclear-weapons state : Pakistan, and encouraging the rise of puppet governments in India-friendly regimes like Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan, to mention nothing of engagement with Iran and strategic coalescence with Russia. When you increasingly have a nuclear-weapons state on the periphery being 'secured' by the hegemon, and its war on terrorism being exported to it, a regional rival being buttressed by huge caches of sophisticated arms and nuclear technology, 'strategic chaos' or ataxia being fostered in neighbouring states with the potential to spill over into adjacent regions, and quid-pro-quo, reciprocative engagement with quasi-mutual, heretofore anitpodal rivals that lead to concentric, condorcet outcomes being pursued, you know that its action does not match its rhetoric.

Let us also not forget that despite the rise of PRC-friendly governments in the last electoral round in Japan and Australia, two of Asia-Pacific's arguably most important US-allies, these have blocked several moves by China with regards to hostile takeovers of important industrial entities in the economic sphere, that these two remain "contact countries", with South Korea and New Zealand, having contributed, to varying degrees, troops and naval support to the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, which remains the single-largest intergovernmental military alliance in the world, having added virtually all of Eastern Europe to its fold in the last ten years. Intriguingly, this is not just limited to India or the Asia-Pacific countries. In July, Mongolia announced that it was providing troops to NATO for the war in Afghanistan, with an American news report stating “the country plans to send troops to Afghanistan, in a cooperation that stems from its ‘third neighbor’ policy to reach out to allies other than China and Russia,” and “Mongolia’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has helped cement its alliance with the United States and secure grants and aid.”

On September 27, the Chinese press reported on a multinational military exercise to be conducted in Cambodia, one nation removed from China, next year:

“[M]ore than 2,000 military men are reserved for the first-ever event in the country and they will come from more than 20 countries, of which 1,500 will be from the United States.

“During a four-day visit to Washington D.C., Tea Banh, Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense, had met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and discussed security cooperation between the United States and Cambodia.”

On October 14, reports surfaced on Taiwan conducting its “largest-ever missile test…launched from a secretive and tightly guarded base in southern Taiwan.” The report also suggested that the missiles were “capable of reaching major Chinese cities.” With President Ma Ying-jeou observing, “the drill included the test-firing of a top secret, newly developed medium-range surface-to-surface missile with a range of 3,000 kilometres, capable of striking major cities in central, northern and southern China.”

Each year the Pentagon leads the multinational Cobra Gold war games in Thailand. In 2009, the armed forces of the host country, the U.S., Japan, Singapore and Indonesia were involved and several other nations “participate[d] in various roles during the exercise”: Australia, Brunei, France, Italy, Britain, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, the Peoples Republic of Cambodia, China, Canada, Germany, South Korea, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Mongolia.

Excepting China, the above roster is a faithful representation of a NATO-Asian NATO axis in formation, as has been witnessed in the past with the Egypt-Israel dynamic in Middle East conflicts, and that in the Balkans.

Interestingly, on October 14, the USS Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship arrived in East Timor, a country carved out with US assistance, for the latter’s “first joint military exercise with the United States”. Also reported by the Dilli agency was the fact that “manoeuvres with 2,500 US troops and Australia forces are to last through October 24.”

New basing and military transit rights in the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have also been achieved, with the United States securing ‘lethal transit’ deals with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Also recently concluded was a 25-nation military exercise by the American Africa Command in Gabon, with "multinational maneuevers soon to begin in Uganda", and the suggestion that the "United States has procured seven new bases in Colombia" to counter the recent Chinese and Russian influence in the western hemisphere.

In addition, a recent article that appeared in the Foreign Policy Magazine by the New York-based Council on Foreign Affairs, co-authored by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl Press, contended, and I quote the following:

"For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia’s decays and China’s stays small, the era of MAD is ending – and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun.”

The authors examine with coldblooded detachment comparative advancements in each of the U.S.’s triad of nuclear weapons delivery systems and that of China's and Russia's.

They state, “The U.S. Air Force has finished equipping its B-52 bombers with nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which are probably invisible to Russian and Chinese air-defense radar. And the air force has also enhanced the avionics on its B-2 stealth bombers to permit them to fly at extremely low altitudes in order to avoid even the most sophisticated radar.”

And they list both nation’s vulnerabilities in an almost gleeful manner:

“The more Russia’s nuclear arsenal shrinks, the easier it will become for the United States to carry out a first strike."

“China’s nuclear arsenal is even more vulnerable to a U.S. attack. A U.S. first strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal.

“According to unclassified U.S. government assessments, China’s entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs.”

The piece ends in acknowledging that with the demise of the Warsaw Pact and any pretense that American and NATO nuclear weapons would be needed against a superior conventional military attack and no further intent, as with Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, to compel adversaries to spend themselves into bankruptcy on a strategic arms race, “Washington’s continued refusal to eschew a first strike and the country’s development of a limited missile-defense capability take on a new, and possibly more menacing, look. The most logical conclusions to make are that a nuclear-war-fighting capability remains a key component of the United States’ military doctrine and that nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States.”

As much as the world likes competition, politicians spout rubbish, and diplomats often meander on the tautologic, the Pentagon, the White house and the US Military Strategic Command will tolerate no serious competition and allow no challengers in their drive for global military, political and economic supremacy.
 

bsn4u1985

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Multiple aspects to this BREAKING :D news, 1. Its just a meet and formal lecture. 2. In Real things are opposite. 3. Obama is the weakest president in all the lineage of last 2 decades.
i also agree with u...obama is the weakest president of usa ever....his diplomacy is n't clear so far now...i don't know in which side he is ....or he isn't............
 

Daredevil

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[mod]Guys, no need to get personal. If you want to continue take PM route. I'm deleting all OT posts on this[/mod]
 

ppgj

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US perhaps is going thro' one of its worst economic crisis. the last thing they need is the collapse. with a trillion dollar american debt the chinese own, it is in the interest of both the countries to keep their 'not so happy' relationship atleast overtly friendly.
china needs US for the fear of being dumped off on the debt and loss of key american market while US needs china to buy more T- bonds, to prop up american economy.
given this scenario, what can one expect an american president to say about china? that too on a trip to china?
after all, words are just that- words.
once US gets its economy back on track one will see a different reality because they think china is their main rival who will challenge their hegemony.
 

ppgj

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/world/asia/15china.html?_r=1&em

China’s Role as Lender Alters Obama’s Visit

By HELENE COOPER, MICHAEL WINES and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: November 14, 2009

When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.

That stark fact — China is the largest foreign lender to the United States — has changed the core of the relationship between the United States and the only country with a reasonable chance of challenging its status as the world’s sole superpower.

The result: unlike his immediate predecessors, who publicly pushed and prodded China to follow the Western model and become more open politically and economically, Mr. Obama will be spending less time exhorting Beijing and more time reassuring it.

In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans.

“They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit,” one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back.

It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.

Mr. Obama has struck a mollifying note with China. He pointedly singled out the emerging dynamic at play between the United States and China during a wide-ranging speech in Tokyo on Saturday that was meant to outline a new American relationship with Asia.

“The United States does not seek to contain China,” Mr. Obama said. “On the contrary, the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.”

He alluded to human rights but did not get specific. “We will not agree on every issue,” he said, “and the United States will never waver in speaking up for the fundamental values that we hold dear — and that includes respect for the religion and cultures of all people.”

White House officials have been working for months to make sure that Mr. Obama’s three-day visit to Shanghai and Beijing conveys a conciliatory image. For instance, in June, the White House told the Dalai Lama that while Mr. Obama would meet him at some point, he would not do so in October, when the Tibetan spiritual leader visited Washington, because it was too close to Mr. Obama’s visit to China.

Greeting the Dalai Lama, whom China condemns as a separatist, weeks before Mr. Obama’s first presidential trip to the country could alienate Beijing, administration officials said. Every president since George H. W. Bush in 1991 has met the Dalai Lama when he visited Washington, usually in private encounters at the White House, although in 2007 George W. Bush became the first president to welcome him publicly, bestowing the Congressional Gold Medal on him at the Capitol. Mr. Obama met the Dalai Lama as a senator.

Similarly, while he was campaigning for the presidency, Mr. Obama several times accused China of manipulating its currency, an allegation that the current Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, repeated during his confirmation hearings. But in April, the Treasury Department retreated from that criticism, issuing a report that said China was not manipulating its currency to increase its exports.

While American officials said privately that they remained frustrated that China’s currency policies lowered the cost of Chinese goods and made American products more expensive in foreign markets, they said that they were relieved that China was fighting the global recession with an enormous fiscal stimulus program to spur domestic growth, and added that now was not the time to antagonize Beijing.

China is not viewed as a trouble spot for the United States. But this administration, like its predecessor, has had difficulty grappling with a rising power that seems eager to avoid direct clashes with the United States but affects its interests in many areas, including currency policy, nuclear proliferation, climate change and military spending.

In that regard, two members of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team said that the United States’ interactions with the Chinese had been far too narrow in past years, focusing on counterterrorism and North Korea. Too little was done, they said, to address China’s energy and environmental policies, or its expansion of influence in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa, where China has invested heavily and used billions of dollars in aid to advance its political influence.

One hint of the Obama administration’s new approach came in a speech this fall by James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, who has deep roots in China policy. He argued that China needed to adopt a policy of “strategic reassurance” to the rest of the world, a phrase that appeared intended to be the successor to the framework of the Bush era, when China was urged to embrace a role as a “responsible stakeholder.”

“Strategic reassurance rests on a core, if tacit, bargain,” Mr. Steinberg said. “Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China’s ‘arrival,’ ” he argued, the Chinese “must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of security and well-being of others.”

The Chinese reaction has been mixed, at best. The official China Daily newspaper ran a column just before Mr. Obama’s arrival suggesting that the United States needed to provide some assurance of its own — to “respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” code words for entirely backing away from the issues of how China deals with Taiwan and Tibet.

In the United States, the phrase “strategic reassurance” has been attacked by conservative commentators, who argue that any reassurance that the United States provides to China would be an acknowledgment of a decline in American power.

In an op-ed article in The Washington Post, the analysts Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal argued that the policy had echoes of Europe “ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony” a century ago. “Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America’s inevitable decline,” they wrote. White House officials shot back, insisting that it is China that needs to do the reassurance, not the United States.

In China, Mr. Obama will meet with local political leaders and will host an American-style town hall meeting with students in Shanghai. He will then spend two days in Beijing meeting with President Hu Jintao.

It seems unlikely that Mr. Obama will get the same celebrity-type reception in Beijing that he received in Cairo, Ghana, Paris and London. China seems mostly immune to the Obama fever that swept other parts of the world, and the Chinese are growing more confident that their country has the wherewithal to compete with the United States on the world stage, analysts say.

“Obama is still a positive guy, and all over the world most people think he’s more energetic, more sincere, than Bush, more a reformist,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor and an expert on United States-China relations at People’s University in Beijing. “But in China, Obama’s popularity is less than in Europe, than Japan or Southeast Asia.” In China, he said, “there is no worship of Obama.”

For instance, during the Bush and Clinton years, China might release a few political dissidents on the eve of a visit by the president as a good-will gesture. This time, American officials say, they do not expect any similar gestures, although they say that Mr. Obama will raise human rights issues privately with Mr. Hu.

“This time China will agree to have a human rights dialogue with the U.S. on some cases,” Mr. Shi said, but “the arguments have changed compared to the past. Now we say, ‘We are a different country, we have our own system, our own culture.’ ”

Helene Cooper reported from Singapore, Michael Wines from Beijing, and David E. Sanger from Washington.
 

ParacelVietnam

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Obama presses China over rights

US President Barack Obama has told China that individual rights and freedoms should be available to all.

He told an audience of Chinese students that certain freedoms were universal - and not just limited to Americans.

Speaking at a question and answer session in Shanghai, Mr Obama added that China and the US were not destined to be adversaries.

He has now arrived in the Chinese capital, Beijing, where he is to meet President Hu Jintao.

Freedom of expression

In his speech at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, the US president praised China's efforts in lifting millions of people out of poverty, saying it was "unparalleled" in human history.

But according to a BBC correspondent in Beijing, Michael Bristow, Mr Obama also made comments that his hosts would have been less pleased to hear.

Although he was careful not to attack the Chinese government directly, he declared that certain rights and freedoms were universal.

China is an authoritarian country in which there are no elections for the country's national leaders. Media outlets and the internet are heavily censored, and those who speak out against the government are often imprisoned.

"We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation, but we also don't believe that the principles we stand for are unique to our nation," he said.

"These freedoms of expression and worship, of access to information and political participation - we believe are universal rights."

Mr Obama added: "They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities, whether they are in the United States, China or any nation."

After his main speech, he addressed the issue again in a question and answer session with Chinese students - many of whom spoke English.

Mr Obama said freedom of information - including open access to the internet - was important.

"That makes our democracy stronger because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear - it forces me to examine what I'm doing," he said.

He said the internet was a powerful tool to mobilise people and had helped him win the presidency last year.

Nobel prize

The US president said there was no reason that the United States and China - a "majestic" country - should not co-operate.

"We have known setbacks and challenges over the last 30 years. Our relationship has not been without disagreement and difficulty. But the notion that we must be adversaries is not predestined," he said.

The United States does not want to constrain China's rise, the US president added. He made a similar comment a few days ago in Japan.

Mr Obama's question and answer session included queries about Taiwan, the Nobel Peace Prize and cultural diversity.

The session was broadcast live on local Shanghai TV but was not carried live on national networks. The official Xinhua news agency posted a live transcript of his remarks.

The president then flew to Beijing to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao for dinner.

The two are expected to hold talks on Tuesday on issues such as trade imbalances, the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea, and the effort to tackle climate change.

President Obama is also expected to do some sightseeing while in Beijing, visiting the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City, previously home to China's emperors.

Mr Obama is on his first trip to Asia as US president. He has visited Japan and Singapore, and is scheduled to fly to South Korea after leaving China.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Obama presses China over rights
 

ppgj

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BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Obama's message censored in China

Obama's message censored in China

By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing

China has tried to neutralise US President Barack Obama's attempt to speak directly to ordinary Chinese people.

Officials have used their control of the media to make sure citizens receive only a censored version of the US president's comments.

In a question-and-answer session on Monday in Shanghai, Mr Obama praised China and urged it to adopt certain universal rights and freedoms.

But in news reports about the session, Chinese media outlets largely ignored the criticism and played up the positive comments.

Climate change

Mr Obama did get the opportunity to speak directly to China's 1.3bn people at a press event held with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday. The event was broadcast live on national television.

But even here, China tried to avoid any mishaps.

Journalists at the event were expecting to be able to ask questions, but they did not get the chance - the two presidents quickly departed after each making statements.

Mr Obama's success in his own country is largely based on his ability to present his charismatic personality to ordinary people through an unfettered media.

But in China the Communist Party stands in his way. It regularly censors the country's media and a presidential visit is no different.

The US government had wanted the Shanghai question-and-answer session broadcast as widely as possible - but it was shown live only on local TV.

In an article about the event, China's state-run news agency, Xinhua, said Mr Obama was "upbeat" about Sino-US ties.

The report noted that the US president's talk to students on Monday covered a wide range of topics, including cultural exchanges and climate change.

But it did not say that Mr Obama had urged China's leaders to welcome the free flow of information - particularly on the internet.

A similar upbeat note was struck by the state-run China Daily. "There's room for both of us," it quoted Mr Obama as saying in a front-page headline.
A worker hoists Chinese and US flags on Tiananmen Square, 16 November
President Obama says China and the United States need to work together

Television news bulletin were sometimes even more circumspect with their reporting of Mr Obama's first full day in China.

The main national television news show on Monday evening hardly mentioned the visit by Mr Obama to China.

It was the seventh item on the 1900 programme - coming after a long report on the funeral of a former vice-premier who has long since slipped from memory, and an item on a Chinese writing museum.

The short report on Mr Obama was not broadcast until 20 minutes into the bulletin and lasted just a minute. It did not show the US president meeting with Chinese students in Shanghai.

But some media outlets did go further than others - the Beijing News was one.

It reported Mr Obama's comments on the benefits of allowing people to communicate freely using the internet.

Free access to the internet "allows people from across the world to ensure their own governments are responsible" it told its readers.

Internet chat rooms had even more leeway to comment on Mr Obama's question-and-answer session with the handpicked students.

"His words were like shaking hands with a guest, but what matters is our national interest," said one internet user.

"We have to bear in mind that while we're shaking one nice hand, we should be prepared for the other hand - which might hit us."

Another internet user complained about Mr Obama's comments on individual rights and freedoms being "universal". "American presidents are hypocrites," he said.
 

Rage

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@ All the dank-yanks and the $hittsters that couldn't understand the first two sentences in my post. I will attempt to explain what is a relatively straight forward sentence to anyone with even half a brain:

"When you increasingly have a nuclear-weapons state on the periphery being 'secured' by the hegemon, and its war on terrorism being exported to it, a regional rival being buttressed by huge caches of sophisticated arms and nuclear technology, 'strategic chaos' or ataxia being fostered in neighbouring states with the potential to spill over into adjacent regions, and quid-pro-quo, reciprocative engagement with quasi-mutual, heretofore anitpodal rivals that lead to concentric, condorcet outcomes being pursued, you know that its action does not match its rhetoric."


hegemon: the global "leader", one with a preponderance of power.
periphery: the outlier states; states sharing a "border", contiguous land or naval with the states immediately in question, indicating an important spatial dimension in the exercise of global geopolitics.
ataxia: a fairly common term in the social and political sciences indicating a loss of control or anarchy.
quid-pro-quo: tit for tat; you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
'condorcet' outcomes: Given a choice of preferences, an outcome is a 'condorcet' outcome if all 'non-dummy' players: players not participating in the choices choose the outcome that is preferred to all other outcomes; fairly common in election uses.


I request all the mods not to delete this message, so that it may serve as a guide to anyone having 'problems' understanding the sentence.
 

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