Final Push for World Government

Clinton Lays Out U.S. Strategy on Ties with China, Welcomes China's Rise

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday laid out U.S. strategy on relations with China, reaffirming that the United States welcomes China as a rising power.


U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers the inaugural Richard C. Holbrooke lecture on the future of U.S.-China relations at the State Department in Washington D.C., capital of the United States, Jan. 14, 2011. (Xinhua/Zhang Jun)
January 15, 2011

People's Daily Online - "As we build on our record of the past two years and shape the future of our relationship, the Obama administration is pursuing a strategy with three elements that all reinforce one another," Clinton said in a speech delivered at the State Department ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the United States next week.

The secretary said the U.S. is practicing robust regional engagement in the Asia-Pacific, working to build trust between China and the United States, and committed to expanding economic, political and security cooperation with China wherever possible.

Talking about the first element, U.S. engagement in the Asia- Pacific, Clinton said the United States is both an Atlantic and a Pacific power and is committed to relationships through both of these two great oceans.

"We are firmly embedding our relationship with China within a broader regional framework because it is inseparable from the Asia- Pacific's web of security alliances, economic networks, and social connections," she said.

The second element of U.S. strategy is to focus on building bilateral trust with China, she said.

"We need to form habits of cooperation and respect that help us work together more effectively, and weather disagreements when they do arise."

The secretary said that the most notable example of such efforts is the Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the United States and China, which brings together hundreds of experts from dozens of agencies across both governments, not only to discuss an unprecedented range of subjects, but to inculcate that ethic or habit of cooperation across the two governments.

She said that both countries would also benefit from sustained and substantive military-to-military engagement and new and deeper bonds forged between two peoples.

"The third element of our strategy is expanding our work together, along with the rest of the international community, to address these shared challenges: global recession, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, piracy on the high seas. These are threats that affect all of us, including China, and China is joining us in confronting them," Clinton said.

"In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the United States and China worked effectively through the G-20 to help spur recovery. Can you imagine where we would be economically if either China or the United States had failed to work together so constructively? " she said when talking about bilateral cooperation on the economic front.

She said the two countries also need to work on some of the global strategic issues that confront them, noting that U.S.-China cooperation at the UN Climate Conference held in Mexico in November last year was critical to the conclusion of the Cancun Agreement.

Clinton said that cooperation between the U.S. and China could also make a significant impact on international development and security issues.

Talking about the future of U.S.-China relationship, the secretary suggested that the two countries should work together for a better future.

"Today we have a positive relationship with China and the chance for a very positive future," she said. "The United States welcomes China as a rising power. We welcome China's efforts not only to lift their own people out of poverty, but to export prosperity and opportunity."

"We look forward to a time when our future generations can look back and say of us, 'They didn't just talk about a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship. They made the right choices, they worked together, they delivered results and they did leave us a better world,'" she said.

"That is our vision, and that is our commitment for this most important relationship," the secretary said.

Source:Xinhua

No Time for Delay on Climate Change, Says Clinton

January 15, 2011

Press Trust of India - Warning that time was running out on climate change, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked countries like India, China and those in EU to show urgency in implementing agreements on transparency, funding and clean energy technology to address the issue.

Clinton noted that China and the US are the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases and their cooperation at the UN climate conference in Mexico was critical to the conclusion of the Cancun agreement.

"Now, we must build on that progress by implementing the agreements on transparency, funding and clean energy technology," she said delivering the first Holbrooke Memorial lecture here yesterday.

"We would ask that China embrace internationally recognised standards and policies that ensure transparency and sustainability," Clinton said in her speech that focused on US-China relationship.

Summit Between U.S., China Must Deliver Real Results, Clinton Says

January 15, 2011

Telegprah-Journal - U.S.-China relations are at a critical juncture and a summit between their leaders next week must produce "real action, on real issues" such as trade, climate change and North Korean nuclear proliferation, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

"It is up to both nations to translate the high-level pledges of summits and state visits into action. Real action, on real issues," she said in a major China policy address.

Clinton urged China to let its currency appreciate faster, end discrimination against foreign companies and further open its markets to U.S. manufactured goods and farm products.

Some U.S. analysts see Chinese President Hu Jintao's trip as the most important state visit in 30 years. The leaders of the world's two biggest economies are trying to put behind them a stormy 2010 and forge more stable ties for the coming years.

Washington and Beijing sparred last year over longstanding issues such as U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the status of Tibet's Dalai Lama and human rights. They also quarreled over newer problems including deadly North Korean attacks on South Korea, South China Sea navigation rights, and rare earth minerals.

Clinton's remarks were part of a week of China policy speeches by U.S. Cabinet officials -- and a trip to Beijing by Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- designed to set the tone for President Barack Obama's Jan. 19 Washington summit with Hu. Each Obama administration official stressed the value of the China relationship to the United States, but also drove home demands for currency appreciation and other U.S. economic goals as well as help with global trouble spots.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Friday noted that the yuan had gained in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

"Because Chinese inflation is accelerating more rapidly than U.S. inflation, the right measure of the pace of appreciation is now more than 10 per cent a year, and that is a very substantial, material change," he said.

On global problems, the United States wants China to "step up to more of its obligations," Clinton said.

"Global recession, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, piracy on the high seas -- these are threats that affect us all," she said. "China should join us in confronting them."

China and the United States, the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, had worked to forge the Cancun Agreement on climate change but now must implement the pact on transparency, funding, and clean energy technology, she said.

China analyst Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation in Washington said appeals to mutual interest are a tough sell to China, which is "not in the habit of granting favors."

"The United States can make all the demands it wishes, but China will satisfy those demands only if the Chinese action is consistent with China's interest, or the United States somehow can demonstrate that it can be in China's interest," he said.