Can
great leaders really shape the world we live in? Or are they mere figureheads
carried along by the unstoppable economic and demographic flood-tides of human
history?
By Peter Foster,
 |
US President Barack Obama meets with then-Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in 2012.
Photo: SHAWN THEW/EPA
|
That is a debate that has long kept academics busy, but this
week, at a ranch in California, it will be put to the real-world test when
Barack Obama meets the new Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
If you accept that men can alter the course of history, then it
is hard to overstate the importance of this encounter.
Lord Powell of Bayswater, one of Britain's veteran China hands,
who sat in on meetings between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher more than 30
years ago, compares its potential significance to the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev
summit in Geneva that ultimately paved the way for the ending of the Cold War.
"If the two presidents can get to a better personal
understanding of what they are both looking for over the next few years, that
could be extremely valuable," he says on the phone from Guangzhou, where
he is on yet another trip that combines business with quiet, high-level
diplomacy.
"It really could be an important tipping point in Sino-US
relations, but we won't know until six months or a year down the line that that
is what it was."
As in the run-up to 1985, when both the Soviet and US leaderships
postured to their publics, accusing each other of stereotyping and breeding
mistrust, this has been a turbulent few years in US-China relations.
Today it is China that the American public eyes with suspicion
thanks to a massive cyber-espionage campaign and growing military prowess; for
its part, China suspects US motives behind the so-called "pivot" to
Asia, which it sees as an attempt to contain China's rightful rise to great
power status.
On Thursday and Friday, however, it will be just Presidents
Obama and Xi (pronounced "shee") face to face in the relaxed
surroundings of the Sunnylands estate, a luxurious playground that has hosted
presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton.
If the flunkies and hangers-on can be kept to a minimum – and
they must for this summit to be meaningful – there is a tantalising prospect
that the two leaders can start the most productive new phase in US-China
relations since Richard Nixon met Mao Tse-tung in 1972.
Just as Reagan and Gorbachev struck up a relationship that cut
through the impasse reached by their respective officials, so it is to be hoped
that Obama and Xi can, to borrow a phrase much beloved of Beijing, start a
process that makes US-China relations more genuinely "win-win".
The mere fact that Mr Xi has agreed to attend the meeting is a
step forward. His buttoned-up predecessor, Hu Jintao, would famously never
stray from the script, fearing that such "informal" settings might
make him a hostage to American fortunes.
Not Mr Xi, it seems, whose far more personable style was on show
last year on a trip to the US, when he took time out to visit the Iowan farming
town where he had stayed in 1985 while on an agricultural research mission.
The two presidents had not been scheduled to meet until the
fringes of the G20 meeting in St Petersburg next September, but diplomats say
that it was Chinese impatience that led to this week's tête-à-tête.
The fact that Mr Xi agreed to meet Mr Obama in the US, even
though strictly speaking it was the US president's turn to visit China, is yet
another good sign. For his part, Mr Obama agreed not to stand on presidential
dignity by insisting that his counterpart visit the White House. He agreed to
travel to California to meet on comparatively neutral ground – this is what
Chinese call saving face all round.
These are very early days in Mr Xi's tenure and reading Chinese
leaders is notoriously difficult. For all his relative charm, Mr Xi has shown a
slightly alarming willingness to stoke and tolerate tension with neighbours in
the South China Seas, but Lord Powell, who has met him, sees a genuine leader.
"What impresses you most is his enormous
self-confidence," he said. "He's much more of the mould of a Deng Xiaoping
than he is a Hu Jintao – and without the eccentricities of a Jiang Zemin. He's
a man with a natural authority, something of a born-to-rule manner."
China desperately needs a leader. The economic model that made
the nation's rise possible – massive investment, cheap labour and abundant land
– has run its course, even as many Western economies remain on cheap-money life
support. For once in recent times, it seems that neither side has the whip
hand.
Even so, both leaders will be under pressure to appease their
respective publics: Mr Xi to show that he will not stand to see China contained
by America, or treated as a second-class citizen; Mr Obama to show that he is
hitting China hard on cybercrime and trade protectionism.
It is a temptation that, as far as possible, has to be resisted.
In a relationship beset with petty squabbles, the presidents must exhibit a
determination to be the grown-ups in the room – even as they recognise each has
legitimate concerns about the other.
There are reasons to believe that this is possible. The timing
of the summit is particularly auspicious, coinciding with new leadership in
Beijing and a second term administration in Washington that has fresh faces.
On the US side, the departure of Hillary Clinton as secretary of
state for the more Middle East-focused John Kerry is a help, say diplomats in
Beijing: Mrs Clinton began softly with Beijing, but was soon viewed with
distrust as she led America's visible reassertion of influence in the Asia
Pacific.
In Beijing, Gary Locke, the former US commerce secretary who is
now ambassador, has also steadied the ship after a turbulent period under the
flamboyant former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, whose much more political and
confrontational style often infuriated the Chinese leadership. For its part,
Beijing has changed its tone in recent months, dropping much of the arrogant
rhetoric that followed the 2008 financial crisis.
As growth rates slow, Chinese leaders now openly acknowledge
that a $14 trillion credit spree that helped it through the financial crisis is
no real substitute for sustainable economic development.
In another sign of progress, China's mandarins – who can always
be relied upon to invent a catchy slogan – are talking openly about "A New
Type of Great Power Relationship", which, while not exactly the
"G2" that was posited three or four years ago, is seen by some more
optimistic rune-readers in Beijing as a signal of intent.
The fact that Xi Jinping was apparently prepared to express
public annoyance at North Korea's latest round of grandstanding in April,
warning that "no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the
whole world into chaos for selfish gains", was also encouraging.
This apparent softening may not last – China might simply be
playing a zero-sum strategic game aimed at creating a relationship it can use
to divide and rule among US allies in the Asia-Pacific – but it is also why
this opportunity to reset relations must be seized with both hands.
Looking back through embassy telegrams and news reports of 10
years ago, when Hu Jintao took office, there were similar expressions of
optimism of a new beginning in China's relations with the West. A decade on,
those hopes remained largely unfulfilled.
Which is why this
meeting provides such a precious, fleeting opportunity; a chance for two men to
lay the foundations of a real, personal understanding that might be strong
enough to set a new, more mutually productive course through the turbulent
decades ahead, and to prove the great men theory of history.
