How will Obama define China ties?

He is scheduled to attend a state dinner in Beijing hosted by president and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao, and, like Nixon, tour the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Substantive matters on the agenda include climate change; efforts to fortify a still-fragile global economy; North Korea's nuclear program; the war in Afghanistan, which shares a border with China's Muslim-populated west; and Pakistan, a long-standing ally of China that is at the center of Obama's foreign-policy concerns.

Obama will also hold a town-hall-style meeting with students in Shanghai. But, as with similar events during past presidential visits, the meeting has involved laborious haggling with Chinese officials over who will be allowed to attend and what they will be allowed to discuss.

While still a senator from Illinois, Obama came up with a relatively clear-cut definition of what China means to the United States, saying, “They're neither our enemy, nor our friend. They're competitors.” He later accused Beijing of manipulating its currency and promised to “use all diplomatic avenues available to seek a change in China's current practices.”

He has since retreated from such plain speaking and is unlikely to revive it during next week's visit, his first to China. On the rhetorical front, observers will be keeping watch for a seemingly innocuous phrase that has stirred much debate in recent weeks in diplomatic circles: “strategic reassurance.”

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg rolled out that term during what was billed as a major foreign-policy address in September. The core idea, Steinberg said, is a “tacit bargain” in which the United States would assure Beijing that Washington isn't out to curb China's rising power while Beijing would work to ease Washington's concerns about its global intentions.

The phrase triggered much puzzlement and debate. To some China watchers, it seemed to open the door for the Chinese to make demands — such as stopping U.S. arms sales to Taiwan or halting U.S. military reconnaissance off China's coast — saying they need to be strategically reassured.

Chinese officials, however, worried that “strategic reassurance” would require Beijing to do all of the reassuring, leading to a lopsided relationship.

Steinberg's speech, administration officials have since said, was not preapproved by the National Security Council or the State Department. In a Friday speech previewing Obama's trip, Bader, the NSC's chief Asia hand, did not use the term.

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