While the Chinese President Hu Jintao resided on American land during his first official visit to the USA since he received his position, the US administration was still reviewing the dossiers of his first visit to the American continent last November.
However, the interest was not focused on the rounds of the past alone. In addition, it focused on the steps which China took in its talks with Australia – the US distinguished ally – pertaining to the investment of the Australian Uranium mines. For the first time, the US administration hears the spokesman of the Australian Foreign Ministry saying that his country did not need the permission of the US administration regarding each step it may take.
From the “past” to the future, the Americans have been accurately observing the following stations on the rounds of the Chinese president, which led him to each of Saudi Arabia in Asia as well as to Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya in Africa.
What are the similarities of all these stations? Why does the US focus on observing the Chinese movement around the world?
The secret lurks in one word: energy.
The US concern towards the Chinese movement, which is concomitant with the flow of the Chinese investments worldwide, has its justifications from the US administration angle. It mainly launches from a dilemma which this administration faces as its precedent administrations and the administrations that will succeed. How will it deal with Chinese power which has gone out of its control pertaining to its multi-faced and multi-dimensional progression?
At the very moment of receiving the Chinese President for the first time on US land, division overwhelms the attitude of the cream and centers of research as well as the US officials as they answer simple questions: What is China with respect to us? Is it an enemy (present or future)? Is it a challenge that must be contained through finding the different adequate means? Is it a chance that must be exploited to enhance the US gains on the level of the state and individuals?
Anyone who presents these suggestions will find or not find those who will support him. There are different viewpoints and each team relies on the facts it possesses and will regard them from its own angle.
For example, let us regard the issue of energy. We will find that there is a kind of understanding among the majority of the US viewpoints which reflects a concern towards the Chinese policy regarding the energy issue.
This concern does not stop at the Chinese growing consumption of petrol, which reaches at present more than 6 million barrels a day, and may reach 10 million barrels in year 2010. The concern increases to touch on the Chinese ambitious project that is based on the principle of constructing 3 new nuclear plants each year for the next 20 years. This means gigantic consumption of raw uranium worldwide.
However, this viewpoint finds some protestors in the same US. This is why the voices were raised to criticize the concern that was frankly expressed by the US President George Bush pertaining to the energy policy in China.
These voices are ironically asking: How can the US be concerned about the effects, which the Chinese consumption of oil may reflect on the prices, environment and world economy, when the US is consuming almost three times the amount of the Chinese consumption of oil, knowing that the number of the population in the US does not even exceed a quarter of that of China?
Nonetheless, the US concern does not only fountain from the direct effects of the Chinese consumption of oil; rather, from the means which Beijing is employing in order to obtain larger quantities of this vital substance.
For instance, the US keeps sending multi-national oil companies to invest in the petrol sources of the poor and growing countries without giving consideration to the human beings that live around the petrol wells. On the other hand, China, at the beginning of its “petrol campaign”, sends teams that construct infrastructure and offer health services as well as opening its universities for the students of the “targeted” counties. Hence, it would offer to the countries, with which it wishes to establish good rapport, an irresistible and integrated “prescription of growth”, giving the yellow dragon incomparable supremacy in competing with the western privileges.
At this point, the story surfaced regarding the concern that is overwhelming the American mediums pertaining to the commercial and political rapport that is growing indescribably fast with the states of Latin America, particularly those which oppose the USA. The rapport is also growing with African states, which are almost becoming – according to the category that came from Washington – US protectorates.
Perhaps the digital language can clarify the picture further. For example, the size of the commercial exchanges between the states of Latin America and China has doubled four times since 2000 to reach $50 billions. Besides, half of the Chinese foreign investments go directly to Latin America. This figure, the Chinese officials say, may reach $100 billions by the end of this decade.
Also in Africa, the sum of the commercial exchange between Africa and China rose from $12 millions in 1950 to reach $39.74 millions in 2005. The evidence is in the Chinese exports that excelled the US exports in the continent in 2003 pertaining to size and volume.
This Chinese “daring” in the zones, which were regarded by the US as its rear garden (Latin America), or in China's future quest (Africa) after snatching it from the claws of the French unjust influence, led to the holding of elevated meetings between officials of the two countries (The USA and China). The “problem” was discussed with all of its aspects. The US did not forget to open the dossier of China’s armament of the countries of Latin America and the different African countries. This issue incited many reservations at the US officials because it drew from their hands the monopoly card pertaining to the strengthening of the regimes which they like and the besieging of the officials whom they dislike.
In addition, the dossier of arming the other countries does not veil another US real concern which Washington leaders keep trying to conceal from time to time using diplomatic terms, still, this attempt does not hinder the matter from brilliantly surfacing. This is the US concern towards China becoming a real superpower, a superpower that competes with the US on the strategic level, not only on the economic level.
This concern was apparent in the strategic report of the US national security that was published by Washington last March. It included clear warnings about the “danger” which China holds towards the US on the strategic level. This issue incited a violent reaction from Beijing. It was expressed by the spokesman of the Chinese foreign ministry, Qin Gang, who said, “China has expressed its strong resentment towards these wrong actions of the US and has presented protests in strong language to the US side.”
The American information formally disseminated or leaked to the media as part of a programmed campaign that aims to favor a certain viewpoint inside the US, indicated that China is hiding the real sum of its military expenditure. Sources of the US ministry of war estimate that the Chinese military budget reaches $90 billions. Meanwhile, the official figures, which the Chinese ministry of defense is circulating, do not exceed $3 billions.
All these matters were presented at the dialogue table during the visit of the Chinese president to Washington. The visit was unfruitful, as it seemed, in finding solutions regarding the existing problems between the two countries, certainly topped by the issue of the deficit in the commercial balance between Washington and Beijing, which is strongly sloping in favor of the yellow dragon. This does not mean that this situation will inflict direct and real damages on the country of Uncle Sam, which will receive a great share of the income that reaches the Chinese land because several companies that work on the Chinese soil are originally American.
Although figure $202 billions (representing the US commercial deficit towards China in 2005) may be a fascinating number, yet some strategic intellectuals see in this economic relationship, a pressurizing factor on the Chinese policy more than on the US policy because the Chinese economic growth that passed 10% during the first quarter is mainly tied to exports to the US. This means that China depends on the US markets in order to preserve the strength of its economy.
In the shade of these interlaced and forked relations between the giant countries, the visit of Hu Jintao to Washington and his sixth meeting with George W. Bush, since he sat in the Chinese chair in 2003 – Bush visited China last November and there were other summits – was an attempt to draw a new roadmap that may lead to the clarification of the US stance towards China, providing that China draws its road towards the top on the level of the world.
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