RTÉ Foreign Editor Margaret Ward reports from Beijing on the first official trip by new US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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US secretaries of state usually cross the Atlantic for their first trip abroad. Not Hillary Clinton.
On Saturday she got down to the bread and butter business of her Asian trip – engaging China.
While she indulged in her fair share of China-bashing during her primary campaign, Hilary Clinton has also written that the US/China relationship will be the most significant bilateral one of the 21st century.
Only last year she was saying that China was taking away US jobs and manipulating its currency. She urged George Bush not to go to the Olympics because of China’s policies on Tibet and Darfur.
But Hillary’s audience in Beijing won’t be the unemployed steelworkers of Ohio or the human rights NGOs of New York.
Now she’s sitting down with China’s leaders, and looking for cooperation on the Obama administrations long to-do list which includes everything from the economic crisis to North Korea.
She says she won’t be shying away from human rights issues, but also says that it’s a very broad agenda.
President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao instead received comments similar to those from Hillary’s recent lecture to the Asia society in New York.
'Some believe that China on the rise is, by definition, an adversary,' she said 'On the contrary we believe that the US and China can benefit and contribute to each others successes.'
There’s no doubt that China and the US are now increasingly interdependent
There’s the small matter that China owns more than $700bn worth of US treasury bonds. Washington won’t want to see China’s holdings reduced when it needs to finance the massive US stimulus package
As Hillary said at one point during her campaign – how do you get tough with your banker?
However, China needs the US too. It wants the American economy to recover in order to get its own exports back on track and is worried about a possible drift to protectionism in the US that could start a trade war.
Another key Obama goal is action on climate change. Without the US and China the Kyoto protocol is close to useless. The Bush administration used China’s refusal to get involved as an excuse for its own inaction.
But Obama wants to change that dynamic, and its one area where there is obvious scope for co-operation. Hillary was due to visit a clean energy plant that is a joint venture between General Electric and the Chinese.
China is likely to bargain hard – and will want the US to part with a lot more green technology that China desperately wants.
Unlike other parts of the world, where the Obama administration was seen as a welcome relief after eight years of George W Bush, the Chinese were fairly happy with his Republican administration.
On Bush’s watch they joined the World Trade Organisation expanding their economy dramatically.
And while the US was bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that damaged its reputation and its budget, China managed to boost its own soft power around the world.
So there won’t be any fawning over Hillary here, but a pragmatic assessment of where the two countries can work together in ways that benefit them both, but don’t affect China’s core interests.
Mrs Clinton’s trip to Beijing may not produce immediate results – but its symbolism won’t be lost on the Chinese. Or on anyone else.
Margaret Ward
