Strategic Trust-Building

If the 2011 State of the Union is any indicator, it would appear that the nation posing the most profound long-term challenge to the United States is China.

Of course, it is no surprise that China would garner some mention in this year’s address.  After all, China is the world’s second largest economy, one of America’s top trading partners, a rising military power, and a key player on a number of regional and global issues of critical concern to the United States, including North Korea, Iran, and climate change.  What’s more, the address came on the heels of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s high-profile state visit to Washington.  So it’s no wonder that China was on the president’s mind.

What was striking, however, was the context in which China was, and wasn’t, invoked.  Obama’s address was principally about the intense economic competition the United States now faces, and this was the context in which Obama repeatedly mentioned China.  Obama told the American people that China is “educating its children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science”; “investing in research and new technologies”; “home to the world’s largest private solar research facility and the world’s fastest computer”; and “building faster trains and newer airports.”  At the risk of mixing Soviet-era metaphors, as Americans are poised to embrace what Obama termed “our generation’s Sputnik moment,” it would appear that China is burying us.

The fact that China figured so prominently in the competitiveness section of President Obama’s address – the very heart of the speech – rather than in the shorter foreign policy section toward the end of the speech (where there wasn’t a single mention of China) seems to represent a significant departure in how the president himself views the China challenge and how he is framing and articulating that challenge for the American people.  It is as if China has “graduated” from being a mere foreign policy problem – lumped in with pedestrian concerns like al-Qaeda, Iran’s nuclear program, and tensions on the Korean peninsula – to the status of existential competitive threat to America’s continued economic primacy and, indeed, even viability.  All other challenges – even America’s hot war in Afghanistan – pale in comparison; in the speech, Afghanistan earned just one mention to China’s four.

President Obama’s State of the Union references to the stiff competition China poses to the United States were just a more eloquent expression of a sentiment that has begun to seep into American discourse on China in unexpected places.  A few weeks ago, in response to the NFL’s unusual decision to postpone by two days a Sunday night match-up between the Philadelphia Eagles and the visiting Minnesota Vikings on account of blizzard-like conditions, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, echoing the words of a Philadelphia blogger, lamented, “We’ve become a nation of wusses.  The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything.  If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game?  People would have been marching down to the stadium… doing calculus on the way down.”

Talk about hitting us where it hurts.

Clearly, China has gotten under our collective skin.  It’s become a kind of Rorschach inkblot for the American people.  In it, we see our anxieties, fears and inadequacies.  We see people marching through snow drifts doing calculus problems on their way to watch a football game – in a country that doesn’t play football.

And, perhaps, we begin to understand that the real threat to our nation’s economic future comes from within.

David J. Firestein is vice president of the EastWest Institute, a foreign policy think tank.  He has taught U.S.-China relations at the University of Texas.

In New Europe, Greg Austin maintains that the most interesting theme to emerge from the summit is that China’s power is constrained both by the international system and by its need to work creatively with partners to address common challenges.

Click here to read Austin’s piece in New Europe

Writing for India Today, EWI Board Member Kanwal Sibal examines the shifting balance of power between the United States and China, arguing that  “the U.S. is mainly responsible for China’s accelerated rise.” 

Click here to read Sibal’s piece in India Today

Between Two Reefs

Despite calming messages from the Hu-Obama Summit,
China’s Asian neighbors are still nervous

By Piin-Fen Kok

The recently concluded U.S.-China summit was important in resetting the tone of a bilateral relationship that has been fractious over the past twelve months.  The modest expectations for Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States —the first state visit here by a Chinese leader in thirteen years—were met in a number of positive ways that, on paper at least, bode well for strategic trust-building efforts between the two countries.  Both sides reaffirmed their desire to focus on common interests while recognizing their differences; the United States accorded China the respect it sought as a major power; there was concrete progress on the trade and economic front, including $45 billion in trade deals and China’s agreement to delink its controversial indigenous innovation policy from government procurement processes; and, finally, there was a serious effort to address tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Given the importance of the United States and China in regional and global affairs, the summit certainly has implications beyond the bilateral relationship.  No region is more affected by its outcomes—and indeed, the ups and downs of the U.S.-China relationship more generally—than the Asia-Pacific.  Consider the concerns over North Korea, the critical role of Taiwan in U.S.-China relations, and how intertwined the U.S. and Chinese economies are with other Asian economies.  But another key reason is that over the last year, the level of strategic mistrust between the two giants has been exacerbated by U.S. re-engagement with Asia amid rising tensions between China and its neighbors. 

In the lead-up to the summit, several Asian countries had hoped the United States would take a tougher stance toward China. They have become jittery about China’s increasing assertiveness, especially with regard to maritime disputes, access to economic resources, and the conduct of its military.  At a White House briefing days before the arrival of President Hu, U.S. National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon gave the reassurance that the United States would protect the security interests of its Asian allies while developing relations with China.

Indeed, President Obama and other U.S. officials  sent a clear message that they would stand firm against an aggressive Chinese foreign policy. They also pressed Hu and the Chinese side on a range of other issues,  including human rights, trade and currency practices, and North Korea.

For all the efforts to convey a calming message, both sides  appeared to be well aware of the potential for the Asia-Pacific region to become a source of heightened strategic friction between a highly confident China and a newly re-engaged United States.  The Joint Statement issued after the Obama-Hu meeting on January 19 contained more prominent and frequent references to U.S.-China cooperation to promote peace, stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region than did the November 17, 2009 Joint Statement, issued during President Obama’s visit to China.  The latest Joint Statement also recognized the United States as “an Asia-Pacific nation” that was integral to the region’s development and stability.    And in his speech to the business and NGO community in Washington, D.C. on January 20, Hu called for the two countries to strengthen cooperation in the Asia-Pacific—where, he said, they had the most overlapping interests.

While this cautious recalibration of relations between the United States and China has been generally welcomed by the two countries’ neighbors, some Asian nations remain wary about how the continuing battle for influence by these two great powers will affect the region.  A Jakarta Post editorial commented:  “The visit may not end with the two leaders resolving their differences, but it will certainly set the tone in the relationship between the global powers.  The rest of the world will have to make adjustments accordingly. We are now moving away from a unipolar world back to a bipolar world, requiring Indonesia once again to row between two reefs as in the old Cold War days.”

There may be some validity in that statement.   After all, Hu’s assurances in Washington of China’s peaceful intentions will not eradicate lingering U.S. or Asian suspicions, especially about its military capabilities.  The People’s Liberation Army’s testing of a stealth fighter jet during U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to China last month raised eyebrows not only in the United States, but also elsewhere in Asia. Some Taiwanese analysts argued that this latest development provided justification for U.S. sales of more advanced jets to Taiwan.  The reports that President Hu had been caught by surprise by the test flight have raised more questions about whether China’s civilian leadership has control over its military, particularly at a time of political transition.  And even while Hu was in Washington, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan repeated concerns about China’s defense build-up and maritime activities and sought to emphasize the Japan-U.S. security alliance.

The bottom line is that the U.S.-China strategic relationship will continue to be tested in the region, despite the soothing tone of joint statements and other pronouncements of peace and cooperation.  How both countries respond will speak to the sincerity of those pronouncements.

The symbol of American power, the aircraft carrier, is at risk; at least that's what some recent reports suggest. In a current article in Defense News, U.S. Vice Admiral Jack Dorsett, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance, states:

The technology that the Chinese have developed and are employing in their DF-21 D missile system has increased their probability of being able to employ a salvo of missiles to be able to hit a maneuvering target.

Dorsett consented that the U.S. Navy underestimated the capacity of the Chinese military to develop a land-based anti-ship ballistic missile that could penetrate the layered defense of an aircraft carrier group. The sinking of a single carrier will cost the lives of thousands of young Americans, not to mention the symbolism of such a disaster amidst talks of American decline and cuts in defense spending.

For students of warfare, this development is nothing new. The Chinese military eventually developed countermeasures to deter the most formidable threat (i.e., the aircraft carrier) in a future crisis over Taiwan. It is a classic example of a cost imposing strategy--a strategy in which the adversary is incentivized to spend substantially more money and resources on defense than the attacker spends on offense.

It works like this. The Chinese military essentially is exploiting the strict adherence of the United States to a naval doctrine based on the carrier by indirectly imposing costs, i.e., costs that the United States Navy is imposing on itself to retain supremacy. Whether a missile like the DF-21 D can penetrate carrier defenses (over which there is some controversy) misses a key point: The mere presence of anti-ship missiles imposes a heavy cost on U.S. Navy offensive capabilities as well as on its budget.

Aircraft carriers will be in service at least until 2050 and constitute the main U.S. instrument with which to project global power. In a sense, its defense is tantamount to defending U.S. global hegemony. They are as much of a political symbol of U.S. dominance as they are an actual means used to project American power around the world. Scrapping the carrier fleet is therefore out of the question.

Hence, the U.S. Navy is forced to deploy an enormous defensive perimeter built around the carrier. Today, each aircraft carrier group fields 24-long range fighter interceptors supported by four early warning radar aircraft, four jamming aircraft, four tanker aircraft, between two and four Ticonderoga (CG-47) or Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) destroyers, cruisers, a SSN-688 class submarine as an underwater escort, and 16 planes scanning the area for enemy submarine threats to counter anti-ship missiles. Out of 90 aircrafts, only 34 remain for actual offensive capabilities--not a very cost efficient way of doing business.

With the ongoing advancement of missile technology, it will become increasingly more expensive and difficult to destroy any missiles before they are launched. For example, the cost of modernizing 84 Aegis cruisers and destroyers to counter missiles such as the DF-21 D will be about $10 billion according to Congressional testimonies. China and Russia are developing jointly an improved missile system with an increased range of 200 km, making it impossible to destroy the missile before it is launched in both the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Taiwan (the two main hotspots for a future naval confrontation involving carriers) because of the inability of current U.S. defense systems to react in time.

In the future, defending a carrier group will lead to an increase in marginal costs in terms of launching air strikes, a decrease of operational mobility due to over-cautious protection, and a diversion of resources from offensive to defensive capabilities. China and Iran certainly anticipate rapid countermeasures and currently are trying to diversify their weapons portfolio. Even if the United States succeeds in countering the DF-21 D, however, its adversaries already will have succeeded in imposing tremendous extra costs on the United States Navy and scored a victory of sorts.

How can the United States Navy reduce extra costs? One idea would be that a reduction in size of the aircraft carrier battle groups as well as outsourcing certain duties (i.e., air strikes) to submarines and cruise missiles would reduce the exposure of carriers. For example, the capacity of 34 combat aircrafts available for sorties in an aircraft carrier strike force certainly could be matched by an Ohio class Trident nuclear submarine and its 154 cruise missiles. A doctrinal shift away from the aircraft carrier also would potentially discourage U.S. competitors to continue working on single carrier counter measures such as anti-ship missiles and split their resources to build adequate cruise missile defenses, for example.

The institutional focus and infrastructural outlays devoted to maintaining the elaborate Great Wall protecting America's carrier fleet is ultimately an ill-fated extension of an encrusted Maginot Line. The United States as the dominant power must apply various strategies and weapons systems to retain its global standing whereas China as the ostensibly weaker player only has to channel its resources towards very specific objectives, deterring U.S. naval forces in East Asia. What these different strategies imply for the overall strategic situations remains to be seen. However one thing is certain: for the U.S. to continue defending the aircraft carrier is not only detrimental in terms of monetary and other resources but will also allow other nations to catch up faster with U.S. military might.

Franz-Stefan Gady is a defense analyst. He works for the EastWest Institute

Click here to read Gady's piece on the Huffington Post

It is almost an iron law of diplomacy: the more rigid a policy becomes, the more likely it is to be counter-productive. When the policy is one of enforcement through sanctions, which imply at some point an ultimatum and possible use of force if there is no compliance, the risks associated with rigid policy become much higher.

What is the measure of appropriate firmness? If we take at face value the current arguments being used in American diplomacy right now, that metric is largely about principle. The assumption appears to be that if the United States is right to oppose Iran’s nuclear activity, then it must be justified in pursuing a rigid and escalating policy to force a reversal. This tendency toward a no compromise position has been reinforced now that the United States has marshaled significant international support, not least in the UN Security Council from Russia and China, for action against Iran’s nuclear program.

To be able to conduct diplomacy from a position of such strength is a luxury. It is also deceptively seductive. It is no guarantee of success.
The application of a coercive strategy is not as rational a process as U.S. policy seems to assume. Coercive strategy has to be deeply personal and, above all, a psychological undertaking.

The aim is to convince the opposing leaders on a personal level that continued opposition is too costly. Thus, the only measure of appropriate firmness in the case of U.S. policy toward Iran can be that which will bend the Iranian leadership to the will of the United States, its allies and the UN Security Council.

For a regime whose very ethos is built on deeply negative views of the United States (its support to the Shah and his brutal secret police, support to Israel, support to Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, and U.S. leadership of invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, thus putting U.S. military forces to Iran’s east and west), this aim of forcing submission of the Iranian regime through economic sanctions may be, prima facie at least, almost pointless – short of the threat of invasion and regime change.

The policy trap of relying on the moral certainty of a position can be confounded by several other factors that appear to be in play. One is confusion about means and ends.

The desired end point for the United States and many of its allies is to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. If sanctions are the main tool of this policy, the analysis of means and ends needs to address their effectiveness in making Iran comply with the U.N. Security Council demands. The evidence to date is not good. In 2008, the U.S. Government Accounting Office concluded, like so many others, that the impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran was “unclear”. According to Dr Diana Gregor, a specialist in this subject cited by the Jerusalem Post on 9 January 2011, “sanctions so far have hit the country’s economy quite hard, but have not had an effect on the mullahs’ regime”. Diplomacy is not exclusively about “right is might”.  

Secretary of State Clinton cited to CNN on 12 January 2011 a statement of the outgoing Head of Israeli intelligence that a “combination of sanctions and covert actions have significantly slowed down the Iranian program”. The latter measure (covert action) may have had more effect than sanctions. Perhaps “might is right”. But there is room to doubt that covert attacks on Iran by Israel or the United States will make it more likely to bend to U.N. Security Council demands.  There may, however, now be a breathing space for the United States, Israel and Iran to search for mutually tolerable but different policies.   

Click here to read this piece in New Europe

Summary report of the EWI seminar held in Brussels on December 6, 2010

The growing potential for ethnic and religious conflict in Eurasia in large part lies in the deficit of proper inter-ethnic integration policies at national and international levels in government-led active economic modernization efforts.

This is the basic analytical conclusion of the seminar on Ethnic and Religious Risks of Modernization organized by EWI in cooperation with Leo Gumilev Center (Moscow), a new think tank focused on issues of multiculturalism.  The seminar was held in Brussels on December 6, 2010, as a sideline event of the EWI’s Global Conference on Preventive Action (European Parliament, Brussels, December 6-7, 2010).

The policy context of the seminar, bringing together 30 independent and government experts from Russia, the EU and the  U.S.,  was largely determined by the Russian President Medvedev’s initiative on national technological and economic modernization. International “partnerships for modernization” are becoming a major element of Russia’s ongoing rapprochement with the EU, the U.S. and other developed Western democracies, and are seen by the Russian leadership as an important source of advanced technologies and innovative management know-how. 

In his introductory remarks Vladimir Ivanov, Director of EWI Russia Branch, pointed out that these governmental efforts largely focus on the development of several critical technologically advanced sectors (e.g. energy efficiency, space technologies, bio and medical science, advanced IT, etc). In the meantime, it is obvious that sooner or later promoting technical innovations will lead to deep social, cultural and political changes. As the Russian federal government is planning massive public investments in such industry clusters, competition among regions for these centrally disbursed funds will increase. In such a multiethnic country as Russia, social and economic transformations on the regional level will inevitably provoke the rise of regional cultural identities. Conflict potential based on ethnic and religious values bears the risk of breaking out into outspoken nationalistic movements, religious radicalism and violent extremism. Increased migration flowing from the conflict regions like the Caucasus will feed instability in megacities and centers of accelerated development. Eventual counter-modernization reactions in Eurasia may well become inspired by anti-Western slogans, as modernization is largely perceived as “westernization” of traditional societies. These trends will challenge domestic and international security of Russia and its neighbors, both in west and east. 

The importance of the seminar was highlighted by an unprecedented wave of inter-ethnic clashes in Russia, which rolled through major Russian cities from Kaliningrad to Vladivosto. The clashes started on December 11, 2010, with a 5,000-person demonstration of nationalistic football fans near the Kremlin walls, who protested against growing ethnic criminality and the inability of authorities to stop it.  For the first time since the end of the 1990s, these events forced the Russian leadership to acknowledge inter-ethnic tensions as a serious domestic issue requiring systemic policy action.

The purpose of the seminar, as defined by the organizers, was to explore new policy ideas for addressing these risks in the globalization of Eurasia, including such issues as soft security responses to religious radicalization and violent extremism, and cultural and economic conflicts caused by the influx of migrating populations into centers of dynamic development. The participants sought to develop a multiculturalism policies agenda for modernization initiatives, both in their domestic dimension and in the framework of international development aid and cooperation programs (e.g. the Eastern Partnership, the EU-Russia Partnership for Modernization, post-war recovery programs for Afghanistan, etc). 

Discussion centered around: comparative analysis of ethno-political and religious effects of  modernization experiences in Russia, particularly in the North Caucasus, the Baltic States, Turkey and  China; the role of migration flows in fuelling national and religious radicalization in the EU and Eurasia; and practical policy implications.

Key presentations were delivered by the following experts: Evgeni Bakhrevsky, Coordinator, Peoples' Rights Movement (Russia); Jean-Pierre Devos, Superintendent of the Belgium Federal Police (Belgium) and Project Manager for Community Policing Preventing Radicalisation & Terrorism (CoPPRA project); Irina Ivakhnyuk, Deputy Head, Department of Population, Economic Faculty of the Moscow State University (Russia); Kirill Koktysh, Senior Fellow, Moscow State Institute for International Relations (Russia); Pavel Levushkan, Chief Editor, Christian Portal “Baznica” (Latvia); Christopher Marsh, Director, J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, Baylor University (United States); Andrey Marudenko, President, Aurora Expertum Club (Russia); Kirill Serebrenitsky, Director, Eastern Bureau for Ethnic and Political Studies (Russia); Denis Sokolov, Head of the Center for Regional Social and Political Studies RAMCOM (Russia); Pavel Zarifullin, Director, L.Gumilev Centre (Russia).

Experts identified the following major factors leading to ethnic and religious radicalization in the framework of modernization initiatives:

• Accelerated urbanization and disaggregation of traditional societies, especially transformation of labor and consumption into market values;
• Perception of modernization initiatives by local communities as externally imposed  in the absence of targeted efforts by authorities to harmonize social innovation with indigenous mythology and traditions; often governmentally imposed secularism associated with modernization (as in the USSR, Kemalist Turkey, Communist China, Iran under the White Revolution);
• Massive financial injections of government funds into institutionally unstable regions with strong population growth rate, leading to the development of regional “economies of violence” which, through the mechanisms of corruption and migration, expand into the national centers of decision-making (e.g. Caucasus vs. Moscow);
• Lack of proper integration policies (observed in Russia, particular EU countries and at the  EU level in general) for migrating populations;
• Strong presence of alternative ideologies (e.g. fundamentalist Islam) in the modernizing countries and regions.

Exposure of particular regions to these factors is even stronger if they are situated in the “critical frontal zones” where different civilizations geographically meet each other, as in: the long-lasting divide between Celtic and Anglo-Saxon identities in the UK; the divide between Romans and Germans in Belgium; the great African chain of conflict zones, from Western Sahara and Southern Senegal through Sierra-Leone, Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Northern Chad, Southern Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia, marking the neighborhood of the Arab Muslim world and Christian and polytheistic Tropical Africa;  and the Asian civilizational frontal -- Palestine and adjacent Arab territories, Iraq, Kurdistan, Northern Caucasus, the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Chinese Turkestan and Xingjiang.
Another contemporary conflict multiplier, according to experts, is the recent global economic crisis: it increased the fight for resources between ethnic groups and fostered transformation of tensions caused by social inequality into inter-cultural identity conflicts, which was particularly demonstrated by cases of growing nationalistic tensions in the North Caucasus, Southern Russia and major Russian cities. 
Turning to practical ideas on how to address ethnic and religious risks of modernizations in Eurasia, experts suggested a broad series of recommendations for policymakers on national and international levels:

1. Include ethnic, religious and migration risk analysis in the modernization programs and relevant international partnership agreements, and develop appropriate preventive concepts and action plans focused on protecting regional cultural identities, and devise flexible integration policies for migrants. Eurasianism, a historic school of thought in Russia dating back to the end of the 19th century that explores ways of managing regional cultural diversity as a basis for sustainable development, can serve as one of the key methodological sources for such policies.
2. Develop networks of independent monitoring centers in critical conflict zones in Russia and CIS countries with the following major roles:
   • Permanently conduct field analysis of cultural identity trends, including through ethnographic expeditions;
   • Create and permanently update a map of ethnic and religious risk zones;
   • Advise policymakers on conflict prevention and mitigation strategies and  methods taking into account local cultural specifics;
   • Mediate local conflicts on behalf of the civil society.
3. Undertake analysis of legal practices in conflict regions and devise measures to harmonize state legislation and customary law and dispute resolution practices (e.g. Shariah law, adats, traditional ethics and norms of the Caucasus). Russian Northern Caucasus could serve as a pilot zone for such efforts.
4. Explore ways to strengthen  international legislation on protection of peoples’ rights on the basis of existing UN documents (UN Charter, the UNGA Declaration of 2007 on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the UNESCO Universal Declaration of 2001 on Cultural Diversity, etc.) to reflect new requirements for preventing ethnic conflicts in the 21st century.
5.  Establish the institute of Ombudsman for Peoples’ Rights, on national and regional levels, in Russia and other CIS countries, with the role to oversee and preserve protection of ethnic cultural identities.
6. Promote best practice sharing (e.g. the EU-supported CoPPRA project) in Eurasia, involving UN, EU, NATO, OSCE, CSTO, SCO and respective national authorities and NGOs, in training enforcement agencies in order to enhance their capacity to identify members of radical movements and to cooperate with local communities in preventing violent extremism at early stages of engagement of frustrated individuals by organized radical groups. 
7. Develop political and spiritual leadership training programs in cooperation with moderate Muslim institutions, targeting potential young radical leaders, with the purpose of providing them with attractive alternative career opportunities within the normal, non-violent political field.

On December 7, 2010 recommendations of the seminar were reported at the concluding session of the Global Conference on Preventive Action at the European Parliament. EWI has established a special project series under the rubric “Modernizations and Security” and will continue cooperation with its partners to further consider the conclusions of the seminar  in view of developing them into specific action-oriented projects.

“President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent visit to India has given fresh luster to a relationship that had begun to lose its sheen,” Sibal writes.  Sibal argues that the media and the international community have focused too much on the India-U.S. relationship, thus losing sight of the India-Russia relationship.

The economic aspect of the India- Russia relationship has made some progress but still has a far way to go, according to Sibal. As he sees it, the countries’ different economic structures have made it difficult to establish an effective economic partnership and a trusted basis for trade.  However, Sibal believes that the countries are making strides in joint ventures, pointing to a new steel plant in Karnataka and recent agreements in the telecommunications sector.

For Sibal, the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Agreement in the hydrocarbon sector represents an important breakthrough for the relationship because “it formally concretises Russia’s greater willingness to develop the energy relationship.”

From a political standpoint, Sibal points out, Russia has been one of the biggest supporters of India’s permanent membership in the UNSC, as well as India’s nuclear capabilities. Russia “is the only country actually building power reactors in India,” writes Sibal.  “In the defence area, India still receives top-of-the-line equipment from Russia, as well as access to sensitive technologies.”

Sibal concludes that President Medvedev’s visit to Russia restored faith in the two countries’ relationship and bodes well for the future, with a caveat: “For it to graduate to a ‘special and privileged strategic partnership’ that the Joint Statement speaks of will need greater movement in the positive directions that President Medvedev’s visit chartered.”

Click here to read Sibal's piece online

Wang spoke at the EastWest Institute (EWI) on December 8, 2010, to an audience that included EWI Co-Chairman Ross Perot, Jr. (who chaired the event); Edward Cox, Chairman of the New York Republican State Committee; Maurice Greenberg, Chairman and CEO of C.V. Starr & Co., Inc.; Winston Lord, former U.S. Ambassador to China; and Frank G. Wisner, Jr., International Affairs Advisor at Patton Boggs LLP.

Wang shared his first-hand impressions of the United States and China’s approach to addressing various global challenges. In his speech, Wang endorsed a piece of advice given to him by Henry Kissinger, a former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor who helped normalize relations between the U.S. and China in the 1970s. Kissinger had suggested that the two countries find solutions to differences in private rather than present the contents of all conversations publicly to the media.

Wang emphasized the value of this kind of discreet communication in approaching the North Korean leadership, particularly during the current crisis on the peninsula. Regarding U.S. calls for China to take more forceful action against North Korea, he noted that his country does not publicize all that it does. Therefore, simply because China has not announced that it is conducting quiet diplomacy does not mean that it is not doing so.

Wang also suggested more candid exchanges between the United States and China, similar to the 2nd U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue recently convened in Washington, D.C. Lauding the dialogue as an important new platform for promoting relations between the two countries, he proposed the possibility of organizing additional dialogues between various groups, such as businessmen or youth. Citing interest by Ohio political leaders in attracting Chinese businesses to their state, Wang stressed, for example, the constructive role that a dialogue between Chinese and U.S. businessmen could play.

This speech came at the end of a nine-day, four-city visit of the United States by a 22-member Communist Party of China (CPC) delegation led by Wang.

Following the dialogue sessions in Washington, D.C. with Democratic and Republican leaders, the CPC delegation visited Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio, before concluding their trip in New York City. In Chicago and Columbus, the delegation had meetings with a number of prominent local Republicans and Democrats (including Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, and Ohio Governor-Elect John Kasich), members of the Midwest U.S.-China Association, leading Ohio businessmen, and The Ohio State University President Gordon Gee. In New York, the delegation also met with Dr. Henry Kissinger.