China trip contrasts with past ones

When President Clinton visited China in 1998, the United States was still basking in its position as Cold War victor and the world's sole superpower. It sought China's help on only a narrow range of international issues, such as the spread of missile technology and North Korea. China was just shaking off the stigma of the 1989 crackdown. It was the seventh-biggest holder of U.S. Treasury securities. Today, China is the nation's biggest creditor and its trade with the United States has grown seven-fold.

Also changed are the faces in the Chinese leadership. Jiang, Clinton's 1998 sparring partner in the Great Hall of the People, was an often boisterous character who liked to sing, and also comb his hair, in public. Hu, Obama's host, is a far more buttoned-down and cautious sort.

Clinton could not tell Chinese leaders what to do. Indeed, he had to abandon a big push on human rights when China simply said no. And his challenge to Jiang over Tiananmen was paired with a significant concession over Taiwan.

But Clinton and other U.S. presidents never needed China's help nearly as much as Obama's America needs Hu's.

Whether as a creditor, an emitter of greenhouse gases or a neighbor of Afghanistan, China has clout that the United States now desperately needs. “The U.S.-China relationship has gone global,” said Huntsman, who arrived in China three months ago.

At the same time, however, China has been far more insistent about asserting its will, most obviously in small but symbolically significant matters of stage management. A town hall-style meeting in Shanghai that the White House had hoped would allow the president to reach out to ordinary Chinese was drained of spontaneity by Chinese-scripted choreography. Tuesday's news conference had no questions, at China's behest.

The Obama White House said it pushed back against restrictions and denied that the nation; indebtedness to China has made it any less forceful.

Referring to the fact that China holds Treasury securities worth nearly US$800 billion, as well as billions more in other forms of U.S. debt, Michael Froman, economic adviser on the National Security Council, said “the US$800 billion never came up in conversation.”

U.S. officials insisted that, despite constraints, Obama still got his message to the Chinese public. State television provided live coverage of his Tuesday appearance with Hu, which featured an appeal by the U.S. president on human rights.

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