Asia-Pacific

Obama has high hopes in Asia

By Tan Yingzi (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-05 09:44

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is set to seek economic and political strength in Asia - and more cooperation with China - during his post-election trip as he and his administration are under more pressure than ever to fix the United States economy before the 2012 Presidential elections.

Though there is no doubt the US seeks to contain the rise of China while looking for a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, a sound and stable bilateral relationship can benefit all, experts said.

Obama will leave Washington on Friday for a 10-day tour to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan to enhance US partnerships and alliances in the region and to attend the G20 summit in Seoul and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Yokohama.

On Nov 11, President Obama will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao in Seoul on the sidelines of the G20 summit. It will be the seventh time they have met since Obama took office in 2009.

The two leaders will likely to touch on a broad range of topics - including economic, trade, security and political issues - as well as the state visit of President Hu Jintao to the US early next year, Obama's top Asia advisor Jeff Bader and Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications said at a White House news briefing.

Exploring the huge Asian markets to help the recovery of US economy is a key part of the president's trip, they added.

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Rhodes discussed the trip as a part of the president's Asia strategy, as "a renewed engagement of the United States in an Asia that is founded upon our core alliances in the region, " he said.

"We see this very much in the context of the focus we put on Asia as a region of the world with the most dynamic and growing markets that are going to be fundamental to our export initiative of doubling exports in the world," he added, "but also fundamental to a number of political and security concerns that will a subject of the President's travel."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also said before her ongoing Asia tour that the fast-paced economic and social change in the region is creating "a future in which the United States must lead."

With China's expanding political and economic influence in the region, she added, the US administration is not seeking to gain anything at Beijing's expense.

There is no "zero-sum calculation to our relationship - so whenever one of us succeeds, the other must fail", she said. "That is not our view. In the 21st century, it is not in anyone's interest of the US and China to (view) each other as adversaries."

After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the US largely reduced its presence in the region - especially after the Sept 11 attacks which led to costly military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After President Obama took office in January 2009, the US government launched its back-to-Asia strategy as many people in his administration believed Asia had become more important to the US and that it should occupy more place in US foreign policy.

Analysts said it is critical for the US to keep strong ties with both China and other major powers in the region.

Nicholas Burns, the former state department spokesman and an international politics professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, said the US should fully engage China - instead of trying to contain it - and that other countries in the region should work together to ensure the peaceful and stable rise of China.

"It is important for the US to have a priority relationship with China - but it is also important that US should pay a lot of attention to India, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia because of their strategic importance."

However, he added, in the past few years, China's rise has stirred regional anxiety, and there appears to be an interest on the part of neighboring countries in asking for the US to remain a dominant power there.

"You cannot go to Asia without talking about China," said Abraham Denmark, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank close to the Obama administration.

"China's rise is the most important development in the region in the past 30 years. But China is not all of Asia, so the US must visit their partners and allies in the region without the accusation of being hostility."

Regardless, the US is not interested in "containing" China, simply because such an effort would be impossible, given its extensive economic ties with every single nation in the region, according to Dean Cheng, an Asian studies expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, another Washington think tank.

Bonnie Glaser, a senior fellow of China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said people should not exaggerate that view that the trip represents a strategic encirclement of China.

"I don't think it aims to contain China," according to Glaser.