Hillary Goes to China

In the coming months, the Obama administration will give us a better sense of what American foreign policy will look like over the next four to eight years. The president is faced with more challenges abroad than he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can realistically hope to resolve in one or even two terms, and several are significant enough that, alone, they could come to define American foreign policy during the Obama years. What will our troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan be in 2012? How much will Obama seek to engage Russia in dealing with Iran? Will increased cooperation with Russia undermine ties with Georgia and the Ukraine? How heavily will Obama’s administration prioritize aid to Africa? Will he get anywhere on the road map to a Middle East peace? Will cooperation over the financial crisis suffice to effect a real rapprochement with our traditional Western European allies? Yet, in the long run, the most important question in American foreign policy remains what level of engagement we will seek with China. And, as Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Asia demonstrates, the most worthwhile strategy for pursuing Sino-American cooperation is teamwork on climate change.

China is not only America’s largest creditor, but it is also America’s only real global competitor. American demand for Chinese goods has fueled growth in Chinese manufacturing, and Chinese savings, in turn, have enabled America to live beyond her means. Yet this symbiotic economic relationship has, until recently, only made the headlines when it’s a matter of defective toys and toxic foodstuffs. Although at earlier points in our history we woefully mistreated African Americans and Native Americans, we lecture China about its treatment of Tibet and sell arms to what the Chinese regard as a “break-away” province, Taiwan. We compete with China for natural resources and influence in the developing world. Now, the only reliable component of the equation, economic interdependence, is threatened by the global credit crunch, which is closing off China’s export markets and inducing it to spend more of its yuan at home, rather than in buying up U.S. treasury bonds.

Yet there is an issue, the biggest issue of them all if you take the long view, that provides an opportunity for unprecedented and much needed cooperation.

Sooner rather than later, the two superpowers will have to find a way to lay the foundation for cooperation on the world’s most pressing issue: climate change. And, as challenging as this will be, it arguably represents the most plausible vehicle for coperation between the two countries. The alternative, confrontations about human rights and “currency manipulation,” only promise to exacerbate conflict. Nothing will be accomplished.

That doesn’t mean that cooperation on climate change will be easy. Only since Obama’s inauguration has the U.S. begun to get serious on climate change, and even so we are unlikely to see a bill pass the Senate and the House before 2010, owing as much to Democratic opposition as Republican. For years the U.S. has refused to commit to emissions cuts if China wasn’t willing to do the same. China has deferred action, claiming that, until recently, it was a developing country making a negligible contribution to the current problem, so it should be allowed to prioritize economic development over global environmental concerns.

Still, both countries recognize that they have much to gain from assuming a leadership role on climate change. This December, 190 countries will convene in Copenhagen for the third and final round of meetings to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the existing global framework on climate change. Until recently, many in the international community were downbeat about the prospects of effective legislation to come out of Copenhagen. Yet clean energy figured prominently in Obama’s stimulus package, renewing hope among many that American initiative on global warming might galvanize the world’s other largest polluters to act decisively to cut down on CO2 emissions. As the industrial power of the 21st century, China recognizes that segueing into more environmentally sustainable growth is not only crucial to its internal development but also has great potential of becoming a major export market.

Having divvied out the perennial “hot spots” in the world to the members of an A-list of special envoys, Hillary Clinton seems to be putting her own imprint and betting her opportunity for an enduring legacy on the China-climate change connection. Watch for this issue to have great prominence for her in the months and years to come.


Clay A. Dumas ’10, a former Crimson associate editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.