World Watch: The summit that wasn't
Call it the summit that wasn't. Today was supposed to be the day President Bush hosted the leader of a nation often described as the world's next great superpower. But Hu Jintao, the president of China, canceled his carefully planned trip to Washington and the Pacific Northwest in light of the Bush administration's evident distraction with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and twin openings that Bush (and the Senate) must now fill on the U.S. Supreme Court. In other words, the spotlight this week couldn't possibly have stayed on China given the issues hitting the administration just now.
The Chinese had worked hard to portray Hu's trip as a "state visit," conveying the importance and even glamour befitting the visit of a leader seen as a critical player in international politics—and critical to Washington. Bush had suggested a less formal meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. But Beijing preferred the pomp of Washington.
Though the Bush administration declined to confer the title of "state visit," it was, in any case, to have been Hu's first visit to the United States since he ascended to the Chinese presidency two years ago. Hu was to have swung by the Seattle area for stops at Microsoft and Boeing, American companies doing big business in China, as well as make a speech at Yale University, where Bush attended college. Now, the two will meet briefly on the sidelines of a large gathering of world leaders next week at the United Nations.
In some ways, it's a pity the two won't have a more expansive session together for there is much to talk over. While Bush has been focused on the insurgency in Iraq, political debate over China in the United States has been taking on a darker tone. Bush has credited China for its help in organizing talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. But, increasingly, a wealthier, more muscular China is being described in Washington as a threat to long-term U.S. interests—much in line with the "strategic competitor" that Bush envisioned in discussing China during his first campaign for the presidency. He has long since dropped the term, and U.S. officials frequently tout expanding U.S.-China relations as an achievement of his first term.
But an array of events have served to shift the terms of debate on China: a Chinese company's (now withdrawn) bid to buy UNOCAL, assertive Chinese energy-supply deals overseas, tough talk on Taiwan (including an antisecession law), China's military modernization, and disagreements over China's currency exchange rate and booming textile exports to America. China has also been looking to re-establish some military ties with Russia, and recently a Chinese general—in comments disowned by his government—spoke of lobbing nuclear weapons at U.S. cities if the two countries clashed over Taiwan, which China considers merely a breakaway province.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last spring, at a conference in Singapore, questioned China's military expansion, because he said China faces no serious security threat. Chinese analysts have been watching the American debate on China closely.
"They are now puzzling over the direction of U.S. policy," says Minxin Pei, a senior fellow and China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "China is getting confusing signals."
For China, the loss of the summit hurts because it deprives Hu, who has a quiet, businesslike style and almost no public profile in the United States, of a chance to take the stage here.
"Hu wants to assure Americans that China's rise will not pose a threat," says Pei. Yet to delay the summit to, perhaps, early next year should serve Hu's purposes. "The next time he comes he'll be the star of Washington for a day," says Pei. Despite several meetings overseas, Hu's meetings with Bush have been fairly scripted affairs. "They've not actually established a personal relationship," says Pei. It seems as though that won't be changing anytime soon.