Economy, not rights, rules the new China-US world
By Christopher Bodeen
Associated Press Writer


BEIJING (AP) -- As a dangerous confrontation flared between China and
Taiwan in 1996, Bill Clinton deployed the Seventh Fleet to deter the
two rivals from going to war. Five years later, when a U.S. spy plane
collided with a Chinese fighter, George W. Bush faced a prolonged
international crisis. Meanwhile, human rights and democracy in China
were a perennial hot-button issue.

Now it's Barack Obama's turn to deal with the China challenge, and this
time, it's all about the money. As the global financial system teeters,
China, with its $1.9 trillion in foreign reserves and slowing but still
strong economy, offers a potential lifeline.

The crisis that Obama is inheriting has pushed aside the old points of
contention and underscored how profoundly the power equation between
Washington and Beijing has changed.

China now owns over half-a-trillion dollars in U.S. government bonds,
more than any other country, and Washington needs Beijing to continue
buying them to help finance the national debt and the $700 billion
financial industry bailout.

And while China's economy is heavily dependent on exports to the U.S.,
it is also a growing market for U.S. products, making trade
retaliation - long a threat wielded solely by Washington - more of a
two-way street.

"The power shift in China-U.S. relations is making them more
interdependent," said Cheng Xiaohe, an international relations scholar
at Beijing's Renmin University. "This next president will need to
exercise greater caution."

When Clinton first ran for the White House, he made human rights an
issue, accusing then President George Bush of "coddling" the communist
dictatorship. But during his presidency, the administration moved to
uncouple human rights from trade privileges - a milestone in
normalizing ties between the two powers.

During Bush's presidency, as Chinese exports boomed, China's trade
surplus hit $163.3 billion in 2007, becoming an increasingly fractious
political issue, even as the question of human rights was moving to the
fringes of the public agenda.

In the Barack Obama-John McCain race, human rights figured early when
Tibetan unrest flared and Obama called on Bush to boycott the Beijing
Olympics. But the issue soon faded from his talking points, and when
relations with China briefly resurfaced, the context was purely
economic.

During the campaign, Obama described China as "neither our enemy nor
our friend; they're competitors." He called for broad cooperation with
Beijing while repeating the accusation that the trade surplus was
stoked by a Chinese currency kept artificially cheap.

The currency has been an especially hot topic in Congress and could
arise again as an irritant in relations. On Thursday, a congressional
advisory panel recommended Congress enact legislation to pressure
Beijing into forcing up the value of the yuan, thereby making Chinese
imports more expensive.

China is a veto-holding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council
and there are many other reasons why Washington needs Beijing's help -
to maintain detente in the Taiwan Strait, strip North Korea of its
nukes, and pressure Iran into cooperating with nuclear inspections.

Throw in the economy, and many expect Obama to take a mild approach
toward Beijing on issues of human rights, freedom of speech and Tibet.

That would be a mistake, argues Wei Jingsheng, the internationally
renowned pro-democracy dissident whose imprisonment and exile came to
define the difficulties of the U.S.-China relationship in the 1980s and
1990s.

Wei, who now lives in Washington, D.C., maintains that the root of the
economic crisis lies in the trade imbalance with China, and that
China's industrial might is built on underpaid, badly treated workers.
China gets away with it because Western business doesn't want human
rights getting in the way of profits, he says.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Wei rejected the idea of
China as the West's economic lifeline, saying China would have a hard
time saving its own economy and anyway wouldn't mind seeing the West
failing.

"This expectation of China to save the West is only a dream," he
said. "But why is this dream fanned up so much? Because the big
businesses in the West are pumping up this idea; they do not want to
see Western governments take severe measures against the Chinese
government."

He recalled the days when Western governments and media were focused on
Chinese human rights abuses - "It is really because of their effort
that people like me survived" - and urged Obama to renew the pressure
by establishing a link between trade privileges and workers' rights.

"It would be like killing two birds with one stone - reducing the trade
deficit while boosting rights for Chinese workers," he said.

But Chinese scholars at government-backed research bodies sound
confident that no radical changes in the relationship will happen under
Obama.

"Although we'll see some disputes around issues like trade, human
rights and climate change, the general framework will be stable," said
Jin Canrong, an expert on the U.S. at Renmin University. "This is
mature bilateral relations between two big powers."

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Associated Press writer Carley Petesch in New York contributed to this
report.