Obama: China and US are not 'predestined adversaries'
Updated
Both the US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in China, laying out what Washington sees as the future of its relationship with Beijing. In a speech to university students in Shanghai, Mr Obama praised his hosts for lifting millions out of poverty. But he said the US sees the rights to freedom of expression and worship, access to information and political participation, as universal rights. Mr Obama's next stop is Beijing, where he'll meet President Hu Jintao on Tuesday.
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speaker: Tom Iggulden, China Correspondent, Beijing
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IGGULDEN: The President's address at the university there today in Shanghai was only seen in a few places, on the internet and other places like that. So it wouldn't be said at the moment that there's a huge amount of publicity surrounding the President's trip, considering it is his first trip here. But while it's something that most Chinese would be talking about, they probably haven't seen quite enough of what the President's said yet to form much of a view.
The one thing that has resonated a little bit here, particularly on that issue of human rights, where you're talking really about Tibet, is that I think it is quite well known here that President Obama has agreed to meet the Dalai Lama, but only after this trip was concluded. And I think that that's been taken as a sign by most people here in China that he doesn't want that issue to cloud the relationship if you like between Beijing and Washington.
And as far as climate change goes, while there is a great deal of emphasis in the media here on that issue, it's something that most people are actually quite well aware of here in China. I think that they see America as a place that doesn't really have the right to dictate to them on that subject considering the amount of energy that's consumed in the United States. So yes, look these are all topics that do exercise people's minds here.
PODGER: Are we likely to see the world's two most influential nations showing some leadership or some kind of joint agreement ahead of next month's UN Summit on climate change in Copenhagen?
IGGULDEN: Well look it's obviously hard to say until the leaders, that is President Hu and President Obama have sat down together and tried to hammer something out on this. But I guess it's not encouraging that there was no agreement coming out of the APEC conference just a few days ago. But as President Obama said in his address to the students today, that America is the biggest carbon emitter per capita in the world, and that China is the fastest growing. So he did make a plea to President Hu that unless America and unless China jointly tackled this issue the rest of the world would be almost within their rights to not want to tackle it either. But whether there's an agreement that follows that plea we'll have to wait and see.
PODGER: Mr Obama also made a plea or insisted that the United States and China aren't predestined to be adversaries, and this is what he had to say:
OBAMA: The notion that we must be adversaries is not predestined, not when we consider the past. Indeed because of our cooperation, both the United States and China are more prosperous and more secure. We have seen what is possible when we build upon our mutual interests and engage on the basis of mutual respect.
PODGER: And that's President Obama speaking there in Shanghai. Is that the view in China?
IGGULDEN: Well again hard to say, one thing that could be said is that the sort of adulation we see around the world that people have toward President Obama probably isn't quite as feverish here in China. There's much more of an ambivalent position toward America in general. But having said that, I think that the economic downturn has definitely brought both of these countries together in ways perhaps they haven't been brought together in the past, and that again is something that most Chinese would be fairly keen aware of and perhaps that's how those comments will be interpreted.
PODGER: If we can stay with economics for a moment how might President Obama fare in his efforts to address first the trade balance and secondly the value of the yuan, the Chinese currency?
IGGULDEN: Well just hearing you should say that, we went to a briefing this morning given by the Commerce Minister here in Beijing, and both of those issues were addressed in fairly it has to be said, strident terms. Just on the currency issue there doesn't seem to be any indication that the Chinese government will allow the currency to appreciate, which is something that the United States would certainly like to see, they say that the yuan is deliberately depreciated to give China an advantage in its exports. There appears to be a flirtation with doing that from China's Reserve Bank over the weekend, but that's certainly been backed away from today by the Commerce Minister. They say that the devalued yuan has in fact helped the global economic recovery by helping China's economy to remain stable and viable.
Look on the other issue, and it's related to the yuan, and that's the trade imbalance, which does favour China, again the Commerce Ministry seems to be suggesting that America's view on this was a little bit hypocritical, saying that American had enjoyed fast paced growth 20 or 30 years ago, and that it then had huge trade surpluses in its favour, and it should now allow China to have trade surpluses in its favour during China's sort of phase of development. So look that is certainly going to raise the temperature as President Obama makes his way here to Beijing when the subject of economics is raised during the next couple of days.
