Status parity nature of the last U.S.-China summit underscores Beijing’s rising global clout
For those still questioning the validity of Beijing’s claim to a global superpower status, President Barack Obama presented an affirmative answer during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s recent state visit to Washington, where he was treated by his host as an equal and their countries as strategic partners in seeking workable solutions to acute modern global challenges of regional and geopolitical relevance to both Beijing and Washington as well as to the rest members of the international community.
Indeed, the White House really went ‘an extra mile’ to ensure that the Chinese leader felt both at home as well as full the weight of his country’s new geopolitical status as well as the enormity of the global responsibilities that come with it on the international arena. This was evident in the red-carpet reception at the Andrews Air Force Base, with Vice President Joe Biden personally at the tarmac to meet the visiting dignitary. Other reception attributes included a ceremonial 21-gun shot salute, a private White House dinner with Obama and a high-profile state banquet attended by ‘who is who’ in U.S. politics and international business in the White House.
Such special privileges, traditionally reserved either for heads of U.S. long standing strategic ally nations or countries considered as equals, have unequivocally pointed to the fact that Washington has upgraded its traditionally low diplomatic regard for Beijing to the level of either strategic partnership or that of an equal equity partner on global issues. A proof of this status elevation is not far-fetched. Back in 2006, then-U.S. President George W. Bush treated the Chinese leader much along the traditional ‘low-profile’ lines, offering a merely ‘working lunch’ in the White House, a gesture interpreted by Beijing as a grave diplomatic insult on both its political leader and the nation it represents. Such disrespectful behavior was more in line with the Bush administration’s narrow-minded view on global issues, the self-declared notion of U.S. exclusiveness and its much-cherished status as the world’s only existing superpower following the sudden demise of the Soviet Union.
However, the Obama’s White House red-carpet reception was intentionally meant to ‘right the diplomatic harm’ done by the Bush administration, and it seems, going by the volume of the official documents signed and the lofty speeches made at the last summit, that Obama had been more than successful in this mission. For an eastern nation like China, where everything counters, such political overtures from Washington mean a lot to Beijing and its Communist leadership.
“The White House really went ‘an extra mile’ to ensure that the Chinese leader felt both at home as well as the full weight of his country’s new geopolitical status and the enormity of global responsibilities that come with it on the international arena.”
Indeed, Beijing, diplomatically speaking, must be entirely satisfied not only with the unprecedented high-profile reception that included trips to the U.S. Capitol Hill and Chicago, Obama’s home state, but also with the global message sent by Washington to the rest members of the international community. That message — that the United States now views meetings with the world's largest communist state, which is now the second largest economy, as summits of equals, a position that differentiated Obama’s view on China from those of his predecessors.
China’s rising economic and political might
Whilst recognition of China’s de-facto global superpower status by the United States is vital for Beijing to help it discard its inferiority complex on the global arena, one can argue that China does not really need anyone to confirm its new global influence — both political and economic — which have seen explosively geometric expansion in recent years, a fact, which pragmatic Obama could not afford to overlook, as had been done by his myopic predecessor. The facts and signs of China’s emergence as a rivalry global power super, according to an old saying, are all over the walls for even the blind to see.
Take, for instance, the size of the economy as measured by GDP, GDP growth, forex reserves, etc. Specifically, in terms of absolute size, the Chinese economy is now larger than the economies of all the G8 nations, except the United States, which is fighting a losing battle with the unprecedented growth dynamism of the Asian giant’s robust economy.
Indeed, China’s economy, whose annual growth rate for the past decade has hovered around 10%, even at the peak of the current crisis that has decapitated all developed nations’ economies, is en-route to overtaking the U.S. economy, especially if the latter continues to grow at its current pathetic rates. Indeed, the time of China overtaking the United States is not very far off, because, according to the data compiled by the University of Pennsylvania, the Chinese economy briefly overtook the U.S. economy at some point in 2010, before falling behind again.
According to projections by the World Bank, Goldman Sachs and other authoritative financial institutions, China, depending on how fast its economic fundamentals will rise, is on course to overtake the United States and vault into the No. 1 spot sometime around 2025. Agreed that this second position based on GDP is merely statistics that places China, with its per-capita income of about $3,800 a year, no where close to Japan or U.S. current per-capita incomes, which are several times higher.
Other key economic fundamentals are also in China’s favor. For instance, the U.S. economy, currently recovering from global financial malaise at less-than-
expected rate, grew only by 3% in 2010, a rate it will try hard to maintain in 2011. This contrasted with the marked dynamism of the Chinese economy, which grew by 10% in 2010 and is also strongly expected to put up a much better-than-the global average this year.
Besides, while Washington is currently wrestling with a growing national debt burden made worse by a huge balance of payments deficit, China's trade surplus in 2010 rose to $183bln. Already, China has dethroned the United States from its traditional hegemonic role as the world’s largest creditor. This is buttressed by the data provided by global analysts, who said that Beijing had lent more capital as loans to developing countries over the past two years than even the World Bank, a position formerly held by Washington.
Besides, China, with its over 1.5bln population, who are mostly debt-free with rapidly increasing disposable incomes, and hence a tremendous consumer market for all goods and services, is fast becoming more attractive to global investors than United States, with its 300mln residents, most of whom are burdened by heavy loans and other financial liabilities that have significantly reduced their solvency during the crisis, and hence their dwindling creditworthiness as consumers of global services and goods.
China’s new economic might supersedes all expectations
Summarizing the Chinese dramatic rise to global spotlight and influence, Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia studies at Washington's Council on Foreign Relations, said China has superseded everyone’s expectations. “The rise of China has progressed to a degree that no one had expected. The global financial crisis has changed the landscape with regard to China's economy relative to the United States,” she noted. “China has a global reach in investments and resources. One of the most remarkable aspects of this, she said, was the idea of a Chinese president coming to Washington to discuss the dollar with the U.S. president.”
It is, therefore, not totally surprising that China’s rising might has drawn mixed reactions in the United States. For instance, in a poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News on the eve of Hu’s visit, almost 61% of the respondents said they viewed China’s rising economic might more as a threat to United States. This belief often incites fear, both justified and unjustified, when Chinese companies seek investments into U.S. technologies, managerial expertise and technical know-how. This behavior has often created fertile grounds for accusing China and Chinese firms of corporate piracy and/or masking corporate espionage as asset acquisitions. Sometimes, this leads to blockages of Chinese investments into assets considered as of strategic importance by the U.S. authorities.
For instance, in 2005, CNOOC’s intent to acquire UNOCAL, a U.S. oil firm, was blocked, while Huawei's attempt to buy 3Com, a telecom firm, was rejected by the U.S. Foreign Investment Committee in 2008. At times, China’s investments into U.S. assets are not blocked only on economic, but also on national security grounds. For instance, in 2009, the U.S. government stopped Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. from buying AT&T equipment for a new phone system over concerns that this might help the Chinese government tap into U.S. government lines.
Rocky, roller-coaster bilateral relations
All these factors have made the economic relations between China and the United States a roller-coaster affair, an issue raised in the official speeches prior to and during Hu’s visit. Acknowledging that the current economic relationship is unfairly tilted toward Beijing, top U.S. government officials, including Obama, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, as well top Republican leadership figures and U.S. companies CEOs, had all levied serious charges against China.
“The signs of China’s emergence as a rivalry global power super, according to an old saying, are all over the walls for even the blind to see, a fact that pragmatic Obama could not overlook, as had been done by his myopic predecessor.”
Most prominent of these charges include complaints that Beijing has not opened the Chinese economy wide enough for U.S. products and services, persistently indulged in currency rate manipulations to gain an unfair competitive edge on the international markets, often violated U.S. companies’ intellectual property rights, etc. However, it must be noted here that similar charges were also aired by Chinese authorities, who have long equated ‘quantitative easing’ to a currency rate manipulation policy, the constant use of dollar-minting press to print ‘more valueless dollar bills’ to laying a time bomb for detonating another global economic crisis, etc.
Militarily, China is home to the world’s largest, with 2.2mln active soldiers, compared to U.S. Armed Forces’ 1.6mln. Apart from human headcounts, the U.S. Army is unrivaled in other aspects — from technological advancement, logistics, personnel training and other issues of modern warfare. For instance, using the number of nuclear heads owned by a nation, the ultimate yardstick for measuring a country’s superpower status, China’s estimate of about 240 nuclear warheads does not qualify Beijing as a worthy equal of the United States, estimated to have over 9,000 warheads, both deployed or stockpiled. Even the unprecedented wide-scale reduction expected within the new START agreement with Moscow will still put Washington many ‘light years’ ago from Beijing on the nuclear parity scale.
China seen as ‘country of future, an empire on the rise and a 21st global hegemony’
China, unlike the United States, currently directly involved in two foreign wars, and accused of causing the current crisis that has both disgraced free market economy and democracy across the globe, especially under the previous administration, is now firmly in the driver’s seat in global issues, as the negative factors listed above have taken the shine out of the U.S. capitalist as global poster economic model for national development.
Besides, China’s comparatively better behavior on the international arena in general, and specifically, its strategic foreign policy goal of ‘non-interference in other countries’ domestic affairs,’ such as lecturing them on human rights issues, violent exportations of democracies to the most unwilling nations via militarily-backed regime change policies, has endeared Beijing to several members of the international community.
This is more strikingly evident in China’s interactions with the Developing World, where its political and economic influence has expanded dramatically over the 
past two decades, forcing western powers to second fiddle roles in Africa, Latin America and Middle East, traditionally seen as ‘direct geopolitical influence zones’ of Paris, Washington and London. This is also evident in the details of China’s rising diplomatic influence across the globe. For instance, Beijing, with its 251 embassies, consulates and missions across, is also fast catching up with Washington, still the world’s leader in terms of global diplomatic network, numbering almost 290 at the last count.
The most tilting point in favor of Beijing is that it is being talked about as ‘the country of the future, an empire on the rise, the place to be in the 21st century,’ while Washington is being talked about as ‘a country of the past, whose might peaked in the 20th century, an empire on the decline.’
These descriptions of the United States’ fading fame might be distasteful to hear, especially among the disciples of self-declared American exclusiveness, but they reflect the ongoing tectonic shifts in global economic and political power hierarchy that will likely propel communist China to the pinnacle of global affairs in the 21st century, just as the United States was in the 20th century.
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