Media Missing Story on U.S.-China Initiatives, Former White House Official Maintains
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 21) -- U.S. media covering President Obama’s November visit to China failed to recognize the broader significance of the clean energy initiatives that Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed to during the visit, according to former White House security official Dr. Kenneth Lieberthal. Lieberthal said in a recent interview with the U.S. Asia Pacific Council’s Washington Report that the summit “introduced in a very prominent and very visible fashion that, for the first time, global issues have moved to the center of the U.S.-China relationship.”
And in contrast to the common belief that China now has significant “leverage” over America due to the large amount of U.S. debt it holds, his research shows that U.S. debt instruments are “so widely distributed that they give China virtually no leverage,” said Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center and senior fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at The Brookings Institution, and former special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council of former President Bill Clinton.
Among the topics Lieberthal touched on in the interview are:
Clean energy initiatives
The package of seven clean energy initiatives that Obama and Hu agreed to in November are structured to expand and become more important over time, Lieberthal said. “Through such joint efforts -- from electrical vehicles to clean coal … to joint research labs doing some fairly fundamental science on clean energy -- we can build trust and expand our ability to work together,” he said.
Perhaps most importantly, according to Lieberthal, the clean energy projects “enable the kind of joint cooperation that goes far beyond the normal sphere of diplomats, national security experts, and economic and trade specialists. This initiative will bring together whole communities from major universities, the corporate sector, and the scientific community that normally don’t deal with each other on a large scale. We have the potential over time to create a much larger and more diverse community of people in both the United States and China who are seriously engaged with their counterparts in a multi-decade effort that can benefit both sides enormously as well as benefit the world.”
Weak press coverage of the Obama-Hu summit:
Lieberthal expressed frustration that the U.S. media covering Obama’s visit to China completely missed the broader significance of the clean energy initiatives. They certainly are a “good start” in terms of effectiveness, he said, but, admittedly, they did not constitute a “big, brash, or showy” breakthrough that typically generates “breathless press coverage.” Consequently, the American press “did not convey the real value of what occurred in China.”
Lieberthal further argued that media failed to see that the Obama-Hu summit indeed achieved what its planners had intended, which was to “reframe” U.S. China relations. “In particular, [the summit] introduced in a very prominent and very visible fashion that, for the first time, global issues have moved to the center of the U.S.-China relationship. These are the global economic/financial architecture, clean energy/climate change, and nuclear nonproliferation – not just North Korea, but Iran and other places too,” he said.
Beijing’s resistance to proposals aimed at ensuring verifiability of greenhouse gas reductions:
Lieberthal observed that Chinese are very sensitive about sovereignty, as is the United States. “Neither of us likes others poking their noses in and telling us what is actually going on in our countries and what we should do about it,” he said.
In addition, he suggested that while China has adopted a number of very forward-leaning policies on greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency, “the capacity of central government officials to know accurately what is happening on the ground is more limited than most Americans understand.”
“Leverage” created by Chinese holdings of U.S. debt:
Some analysts have argued that the United States has become China’s supplicant, of sorts, owing to the enormous U.S. debt held by Beijing. Lieberthal disputed that argument, pointing to his research findings.
“China holds less than 7 percent of outstanding Treasury bills and less than 7 percent of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt,” he said. “China’s foreign direct investment in the United States is 0.1 percent of total foreign direct investment. Chinese entities’ U.S. stock market holdings are a comparably small figure. So the reality is that [while] China is the largest single holder of those [U.S.] debt instruments, [those] holdings . . . are so widely distributed that they give China virtually no leverage.”
China’s reluctance to support U.N. sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program:
Lieberthal said that the China and the U.S. disagree on how much can be accomplished through the use of sanctions. This is one reason why Beijing does not want the U.N. Security Council resolution to be adopted, he said.
Another reason, he proposed, is because the Chinese “really, really do not like to be the only ones on the outside when all the major powers are considering a major, sensitive issue.”
“Chinese officials apparently hope that the Russians won’t support [the U.N. Security Council resolution against Iran] and they can then hide behind the Russians. But if the Russians do support Security Council sanctions, China will find itself all alone.”
Faced with that prospect, the Chinese likely will “negotiate hard to take some of the edge off the resolution, and then join the rest of the members of the Security Council in supporting it,” he said.
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