Under The Same Blue Sky

Barack Obama on Wednesday made an obligatory stop at the Great Wall of China at the close of a three-day visit in which he also bumped against the “great firewall” of China.

Much like Richard Nixon, the president who first travelled behind the “bamboo curtain” in 1972 and helped set US-China relations on the road to normalisation, the sight of the snaking 2,000-year-old stone wall failed to elicit Mr Obama’s most memorable words.

Mr Nixon famously said: “I think you would have to conclude that this is a great wall.” America’s 37th president went on to say: “… and it must have been built by a great people”. Much to Mr Nixon’s chagrin, the media only quoted the first half of that sentence.

Initially, President Obama repeated the same superlative he had used on Tuesday when visiting the Forbidden City and described the wall as “spectacular”.

But on being pressed by reporters on Wednesday, Mr Obama said: “It’s (the wall is) a reminder of the ancient history of the Chinese people.”

America’s 44th president, dressed in a black leather jacket and no hat in spite of the sub-zero temperature, then paused and added reflectively: “It gives you a good perspective on a lot of the day-to-day things. They don’t amount to much in the scope of history.”

One such day-to-day thing might have been the White House’s wounded response to the US media’s sardonic coverage of Mr Obama’s “town hall” event in Shanghai on Monday in which he took questions from Chinese students.

In spite of vigorous White House lobbying, the Chinese authorities refused to broadcast the event live on national television. Many of China’s internet users also reported difficulty in accessing the White House website, which theoretically made the streaming broadcast available to all of China’s 350m online subscribers.

US officials were incensed the US media chose to emphasise the “great firewall” aspect of the event rather than the fact this was the first time a president had been able to use such a platform in China, or that Mr Obama used the occasion to hammer home the pitfalls of internet censorship – though without mentioning China directly.

Some officials even privately suggested that China’s decision to minimise viewership was motivated by anxiety over the potential appeal of a young politician who came from nowhere to take the White House, partly on the back of his skill at appealing to the nation’s youth via the internet.

Either way, Mr Obama on Wednesday appeared to be focused on the larger view of his visit to China – the first time a US president has visited the world’s most populous country within a year of taking office.

After his concluding meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, Mr Obama told Wen Jiabao, China’s premier: “A relationship that used to be focused just on economic and trade issues is now expanding to deal with a whole host of global issues in which US-China co-operation is critical.”

Clearly flattered at having hosted a US president who sought to recognise and make use of China’s return to great power status, Mr Wen said: ”We are really on the cusp of moving forward with this relationship.”

A couple of hours later, having concluded his 50-minute tour of the Great Wall, a Chinese journalist asked Mr Obama what he brought with him from the US to China.

At first misunderstanding the question, the president then got the meaning and gamely replied: “I bring a great admiration for Chinese civilisation and I bring greetings from the American people.”

Richard Nixon could not have put it better himself.

Gone are the days when the US president could visit Beijing as the unassailable top dog, able to lecture the Chinese on everything from human rights to an overvalued currency. As has become fashionable to note, events have instead obliged Barack Obama to play the role of washed-up debtor visiting his stern bank manager for yet another loan.

That analogy is useful. But it can be overdone. Certainly, the financial crisis has brought into sharp relief just how dependent the US has become on foreign creditors, chief among them China.

It has also sharpened the perception of what had been happening anyway, the relative decline of a US-centric west and the relative rise of a China-centric Asia. But the word relative is important. China, poor and riddled with internal contradictions, is not there yet, by a very long way.

The changing relationship with China does demand a new tone. But early indications are that Mr Obama is still fumbling for the right one. Take global imbalances.

In the only set-piece speech of his Asian tour – delivered in Japan, perhaps to assure his hosts that Washington is not abandoning Tokyo just yet – Mr Obama correctly pointed out that the global economy cannot go back to business as usual. “One of the important lessons this recession has taught us is the limits of depending primarily on American consumers and Asian exports to drive growth,” he said.

That is quite right. But his entreaties on global rebalancing fall flat in China. That is partly because Beijing remains publicly sceptical about the US’s long-term finances.

From China’s perspective, Mr Obama’s emergency measures to stimulate the US economy and persuade Americans to spend their way out of recession smack of re-creating the spendthrift ways that triggered the crisis in the first place.

That explains why Chinese officials have quizzed their US counterparts so robustly about how they intend to pay for healthcare reform. It is also why Beijing has started questioning US monetary, as well as fiscal, policy.

On the eve of the US president’s visit, Liu Mingkang, China’s chief banking regulator, took a swipe at the US Federal Reserve, saying the combination of a weak dollar and low interest rates risked generating a global asset bubble. That is a bit rich coming from someone who oversees a banking system that has pumped the equivalent of nearly 30 per cent of gross domestic product into the economy so far this year. But it reflects the new tone with which China presumes it can address a humbled superpower.

Mr Obama’s efforts to occupy the moral high ground are also undermined by his flirtation with protectionism, particularly his decision to slap tariffs on Chinese tyres.

His administration has failed to spell out a convincing trade policy – and that is seen as a stark omission for a business-oriented Asian audience. Such perceived deficiencies have hobbled his ability to cajole China with any real conviction.

When it comes to human rights, too, the US seems to have drawn the conclusion it is not good policy to badmouth its chief creditor.

Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, set the tone early when she said that human rights should not “interfere” with matters of implicitly greater urgency. Mr Obama obligingly omitted all references to Tibet, Xinjiang and even Taiwan from his Tokyo speech. There was also not a single mention of India, a potential regional counterweight to China, yet another indication that Washington is behaving as though it is treading on eggshells. It was therefore all the more refreshing to hear Mr Obama criticise Chinese censorship during his town hall meeting in Shanghai yesterday – though even that could not undo his own self-censorship in refusing to meet the Dalai Lama before this week’s trip.

It is right and proper that the US acknowledge the rising significance of China. Mr Obama’s assurances that China’s rise need not be a threat were spot on. But by the same token, US accommodation can be taken too far. Contrary to common perception, China’s huge holdings of US treasuries are not a sign of great strength. They are evidence of how dependent Chinese growth has been on the US consumer.

Equally, any idea that China, with an economy less than a third the size of the US and a GDP per capita roughly the same as Angola’s, can somehow save the world is ludicrous. Mr Obama is right to show respect to China. He need not – and must not – kowtow.