[Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi
also found areas of agreement over North Korea, which under pressure from China
has muted a flurry of belligerent statements after nuclear and missile tests
this year. After suspending nearly all contact with South Korea, the North has
in recent weeks reversed course, and on Sunday officials of the two countries
are to meet at a border village to arrange the first cabinet minister-level
meeting in six years.]
By Jackie Calmes and Steven Lee Myers
 |
Evan Vucci/Associated Press
President Xi Jinping of China and President Obama
took a walk Saturday
on the grounds of the Sunnylands estate in
California.
|
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — Even as they pledged to build “a new model” of relations, President Obama and
President Xi Jinping of China ended two days
of informal meetings here on Saturday moving closer on pressuring a nuclear North Korea and
addressing climate change, but
remaining sharply divided over cyberespionage and other issues that have
divided the countries for years.
Although the leaders of
the world’s two biggest powers made no public statements on their second day of
talks, their disagreements — over cyberattacks as well as arms sales to Taiwan,
maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea and manipulation of the
Chinese currency — spilled into the open when senior officials from both
countries emerged to describe the meetings in detail.
From the outset, the
White House said the purpose of the meetings here was not to announce new deals
or understandings — “deliverables,” in diplomatic parlance — but to create a
more comfortable relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi, who took full power
in March, that could avoid plunging the two nations into escalating conflict.
Even so, the White House
announced that the two countries had reached at least one concrete accord that
environmentalists welcomed as a potential step in combating climate change.
China and the United States agreed to discuss ways to reduce emissions of
hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs, that are used in refrigerants and insulating
foams.
Representative Henry A.
Waxman of California, one of several senior Democrats who urged Mr. Obama to
raise the issue in these talks, praised the announcement. “A global phase-down of
HFCs would eliminate more heat-trapping gases by 2050 than the United States
emits in an entire decade,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi
also found areas of agreement over North Korea, which under pressure from China
has muted a flurry of belligerent statements after nuclear and missile tests
this year. After suspending nearly all contact with South Korea, the North has
in recent weeks reversed course, and on Sunday officials of the two countries
are to meet at a border village to arrange the first cabinet minister-level
meeting in six years.
Mr. Obama’s
administration has welcomed China’s new assertiveness with its neighbor and
ally, believing that it reflects a new calculation that a constant state of
crisis on the Korean Peninsula is destabilizing for the Chinese as well. The
two presidents held a long discussion on North Korea over what Tom Donilon, Mr.
Obama’s departing national security adviser, called “a very lively dinner” on
Friday, and he said that they agreed that dealing with the country’s nuclear
arsenal was a promising arena for “enhanced cooperation.”
“They agreed that North
Korea has to denuclearize, that neither country will accept North Korea as a
nuclear-armed state” and that their two nations would work together to achieve
that through pressure on Pyongyang, Mr. Donilon said.
The two presidents met
for nearly eight hours beginning Friday evening, and appeared eager to redefine
the relationship in a way that would allow their countries to overcome their
economic, political and diplomatic differences, rather than letting new — or
old — crises derail progress across the spectrum of issues.
On the most contentious
issue in recent months — American accusations that Chinese corporations linked
to the military had pilfered military and economic secrets and property in
cyberspace — the officials seemed to speak past each other. That dominated
Saturday’s talks here at a secluded estate, but ended without a clear
acknowledgment by Mr. Xi of any culpability.
China’s state councilor,
Yang Jiechi, said China strongly opposed hacking and cyberespionage and was
itself a victim, while Mr. Donilon warned that the threat from China threatened
to constrain the spirit of partnership Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi publicly declared
they wanted.
Mr. Obama warned that if
the hacking continued, Mr. Donilon said, it “was going to be a very difficult
problem in the economic relationship.”
In remarks during a
joint appearance on Friday night, Mr. Obama at least publicly softened his
language and spread the blame for the hacking and theft of business, financial
and military information. “Those are not issues that are unique to the
U.S.-China relationship,” the president said. “Those are issues that are of
international concern. Oftentimes it’s nonstate actors who are engaging in
these issues as well.”
He added, “We’re going
to have to work very hard to build a system of defenses and protections, both
in the private sector and in the public sector, even as we negotiate with other
countries around setting up common rules of the road.” And, Mr. Obama said,
China would face similar threats as its economy develops — Mr. Xi suggested it
already had — “which is why I believe we can work together on this rather than
at cross-purposes.”
Secretary of State John
Kerry, who attended the meetings, has previously announced that the two
countries would discuss the matter as part of the annual meetings known as the Strategic and
Economic Dialogue, to be held in Washington in July.
Mr. Yang said that the
two discussed a host of contentious issues and “did not shy away from
differences.” Mr. Xi called on the United States to end its arms sales to
Taiwan, he said, and reasserted its territorial claims, while pledging to resolve
them peacefully. Mr. Yang also defended China’s control of its currency and
said it was not the core trade issue between them.
Broadly, though, both
leaders urged cooperation, not conflict. Mr. Obama called for joint efforts to
address climate change, including through sharing clean-energy technologies,
and to establish better military communications so “that we each understand our
strategic objectives at the military as well as the political levels.”
Mr. Xi agreed. “China
and the United States must find a new path,” he said, “one that is different
from the inevitable confrontation and conflict between the major countries of
the past.”
The Chinese president,
who as a young man lived for a time with a family in Iowa and visited again during
a trip to the United States last year as vice president, said he and Mr. Obama
would keep “close communication” through letters, phone calls, bilateral meetings
and visits, adding, “I invited President Obama to come to China at an
appropriate time for a similar meeting like this.”
“Both sides have the
political will to build this relationship,” Mr. Xi said.
For all the advance talk
of the informality of the meetings, they largely followed well-established
diplomatic routine, and the necessary translations limited spontaneity. The two
leaders sat opposite each other at a conference table, flanked by their senior
aides and interpreters. When they appeared before journalists, briefly, they
selected one American and one Chinese reporter to ask a question each.
According to White House officials, they then continued their discussion
until 10:44 p.m. over a dinner that lasted almost two hours —
including lobster tamales, porterhouse steak and cherry pie, prepared on site
by the celebrity chef Bobby Flay.
Mr. Obama stayed
overnight at the Sunnylands retreat, a
25,000-square-foot Modernist mansion that was the winter oasis of the
billionaire publisher and Republican patron Walter H. Annenberg, but the
Chinese party chose to stay at a nearby hotel.
After breakfast on
Saturday, the two presidents resumed discussions. They emerged first from the
main house at Sunnylands and strolled across a bucolic expanse of grass and
over a pedestrian bridge with the San Jacinto Mountains as a spectacular
backdrop. Wearing shirts open at the neck and no jackets, they were accompanied
only by their interpreters, and their discussion could not be discerned.
While their talks on
Friday evening delved into security and geopolitical issues, the meetings on
Saturday focused on economic and trade issues.
Mr. Obama, Mr. Xi and
their all-male attendants forsook ties, which was just as well, since the room
at the Annenberg estate where they met seemed uncomfortably hot at times. But
perhaps understandably, given the personalities of both leaders, there was little
sign of backslapping bonhomie in what administration officials had advertised
as an “unscripted” setting.
After the talks ended on
Saturday, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi had tea with Mr. Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, a famed
singer and major general, and Madame Ni, the wife of the Chinese ambassador to
the United Nations. The Chinese delegation left the retreat about noon. For Mr.
Xi, it ended a trip that last week had him in Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica
and Mexico — another sign of Beijing’s global ambitions and search for new
energy sources.
Mr. Obama planned to
stay another night at Sunnylands. After Mr. Xi’s departure, he golfed on the
estate’s nine-hole course — one Republican presidents since Dwight D.
Eisenhower have played — with three friends from his high-school days in
Hawaii, despite temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.
