China yesterday urged US president-elect Barack Obama to oppose independence for Taiwan, saying that the proper handling of the issue was key to good relations between Beijing and Washington.
“We urge the United States to honor its commitment ... honor the one China policy and stop selling weapons to Taiwan,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said when asked to comment on US-China relations after Obama’s election win.
“Judging from the development of bilateral relations in the past years, the Taiwan issue is the most sensitive issue,” he said.
“We hope the US will properly handle this issue, adhere to the three communiques, adhere to the one-China principle and oppose Taiwan independence, so that our relations will develop in a smooth and stable way,” Qin said.
Meanwhile, experts say China-US ties should remain steady under an Obama presidency, largely because of Washington’s need for cooperation on the global financial crisis from an increasingly powerful Beijing.
Obama criticized Chinese trade policies during his campaign, but not in particularly strident terms. And with a myriad of other problems to face, including two wars and the US financial meltdown, his attention will be diverted from such concerns as China’s currency policy and its military build-up, analysts said.
“It should be a very smooth transition. Obama is not a president who ran against China,” said professor David Zweig, an expert on Chinese foreign relations at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
By contrast, he said, the campaigns of the past four US presidents, with the exception of former US president George H. W. Bush, all featured tough words for Beijing.
“This could be the smoothest transition since 1980,” Zweig said.
The need to coax China into global efforts to address the world financial crisis could force Obama to mute criticism on other issues, observers said.
“Obama will not try to project China in negative terms,” said Bahukutumbi Raman, a fellow with India’s Chennai Centre for China Studies.
“With the US facing a meltdown, China is much needed in terms of the financial and economic clout it can bring to bear on the crisis,” he said.
China’s leaders are widely viewed as favoring Republican presidents over Democrats because of the perception that the latter’s ties to US unions make them more vocal about trade practices that impact on US jobs.
The Bush administration has done little to dispel this belief.
Although US President George W. Bush angered China by meeting the Dalai Lama last year and has criticized China’s control of its Christians, his administration has otherwise tended to tread lightly.
Criticisms of China’s currency policy — which are seen as giving Chinese a competitive advantage — were relayed frequently but politely.
And Bush, like some other world leaders, insisted on attending the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, despite a harsh Chinese military crackdown in Tibet.
China’s huge trade surplus with the US — which rose to US$25.3 billion in August, its highest point since October last year — will remain a thorn for Obama, but perhaps less so than in the past as global economic woes slow Chinese exports, Raman said.
Beijing’s human rights record will also remain a source of friction, but Obama looks unlikely to let that derail the relationship, said Jerome Cohen, adjunct fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations.
“I expect that Obama will move closer to China sooner than most presidents have,” he said, adding that a visit to China was likely early in his administration.
Certain Obama policies could also help foster ties, particularly his call for cuts in US greenhouse gas emissions, said Zhu Feng (朱楓), vice director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University.
Despite Chinese calls for developed nations to lead the way, Bush has resisted such cuts, and China could gain from a more cooperative approach by Obama, especially if it leads to transfers of environmental technologies.
“These are the world’s two top emitters of greenhouse gases,” Zhu said. “Obama could leverage American power to influence China here in a really effective way. This could provide a new field in which to cooperate.”
In the end, Obama must take heed of the fact that China today is stronger and more confident than when his predecessor took office eight years ago, Raman said.
“I think relations could very well be better under Obama, but it doesn’t really matter who is president. You cannot be on China’s wrong side anymore,” he said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done