Xi’s visit highlights strong, tense ties to China
America’s relationship with China qualifies as “It’s complicated.” Very, very complicated.
As we welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tacoma, we note both the richness and strains of that relationship.
The richness is exemplified by Xi’s planned visit to Tacoma’s Lincoln High School, which arises from Tacoma’s 21-year-old sister-city relationship with Fuzhou, China. Xi personally ratified the sister-city agreement when he was an official in that port city. He’s not a stranger to Tacoma, and we’re glad to see him back for a visit.
The president of China didn’t come to the United States just to thrill the students of Lincoln High, of course; he’s here to help keep lines of communication open between the world’s two largest economies. He’ll be talking trade and geopolitics with President Obama when he goes to the nation’s capital. His initial stops in Seattle and Tacoma emphasize how important China is to this state, and vice versa.
Washington leads the nation in exports to China. We sell the Chinese commercial jets, software, apples, wheat and countless other goods. China is investing here, most prominently in a proposed $3.4 billion project in the Tacoma Tideflats that would convert methanol to natural gas. We like the idea of importing manufacturing jobs from China; the payrolls have generally flowed in the opposite direction.
Xi’s conversations with this region’s leaders should be pleasant indeed. It’s up to Obama to confront Xi with the more problematic dimensions of China’s behavior.
These include cyber theft, hacking attacks and industrial espionage; arrests of human rights activists; repression of religion and political dissent; currency manipulation and an increasingly aggressive military posture.
China’s neighbors – including such longtime U.S. allies as Japan and the Philippines – feel increasingly threatened. China’s expanding influence is a given, and no country has credible designs on its territory. Its impulses toward confrontation can be hard to understand.
Still, there’s much more to China than militarism, crackdowns and Internet subterfuge.
China has also been working with the United States to curb carbon dioxide emissions. It is showing more interest in reining in the dangerously reckless behavior of its historic client, North Korea. The United States and China are joined at the hip in many scientific projects, and their two-way trade now amounts to $600 billion a year.
We hope that the trade will nurture democratic values in China. But good influence can run both ways. While China would be better off with a less authoritarian government, the Chinese have much to teach the modern United States about the virtues of community and extended family. America has been suffering from the disintegration of both.
May Xi enjoy his visit and return to Beijing with a deep impression of American good will toward China. He’s been seeing some protests since he got off the plane. Odd as it might seem in communist party circles, those are part of America’s good will, too.
This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Xi’s visit highlights strong, tense ties to China."