[At
a ceremony in this picturesque lakefront city, the two leaders hailed the
adoption of the Paris agreement as critical to bringing it into force
worldwide. Though widely expected as the next step in the legal process, the
move could provide a boost to those who want to build momentum for further
climate talks by bringing the December accord into effect as soon as possible.]
By Mark Landler and Jane Perlez
 |
|
President
Obama spoke to Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times about climate
change and conservation during a trip to Midway Atoll to expand a protected national monument to create the world’s largest marine preserve. By A.J. CHAVAR on Publish Date September 2, 2016. Photo by A.J. Chavar/The New York Times. Watch in Times Video >> |
HANGZHOU,
China — President Obama and
President Xi Jinping of China formally committed the world’s two largest
economies to the Paris climate agreement here on Saturday, cementing their
partnership on climate change and offering a rare display of harmony in a
relationship that has become increasingly discordant.
On multiple fronts, like computer hacking and
maritime security, ties between China and the United States have frayed during
the seven and a half years of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The friction has worsened
since the ascension of Mr. Xi as a powerful nationalist leader in 2013.
Yet the fact that he and Mr. Obama could set
aside those tensions to work together yet again on a joint plan to reduce
greenhouse gases attests to the pragmatic personal rapport they have built, as
well as to the complexity of the broader United States-China relationship, a
tangle of competing and congruent interests.
At a ceremony in this picturesque lakefront
city, the two leaders hailed the adoption of the Paris agreement as critical to
bringing it into force worldwide. Though widely expected as the next step in
the legal process, the move could provide a boost to those who want to build
momentum for further climate talks by bringing the December accord into effect
as soon as possible.
Countries accounting for 55 percent of the
world’s emissions must present formal ratification documents for that to
happen, and together, China and the United States generate nearly 40 percent of
the world’s emissions.
“Despite our differences on other issues, we
hope our willingness to work together on this issue will inspire further
ambition and further action around the world,” Mr. Obama declared.
Mr. Xi praised the Paris agreement as a
milestone, adding, “It was under Chinese leadership that much of this progress
was made.”
From the moment he stepped off Air Force One
on his final visit to Asia as president, Mr. Obama confronted a resurgent
China, undaunted by his efforts to restore America’s presence in the region and
poised to capitalize on his troubles in winning congressional passage of his
ambitious regional trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mr. Obama’s chaotic welcome on the tarmac
captured the mood on the eve of the G20 summit. There were arguments at the
airport between White House aides and Chinese security officials who tried to
keep back reporters. Shouting matches also broke out between Mr. Obama’s staff
and guards over how many people were allowed into the state guesthouse where he
and Mr. Xi later met.
In recent years, the Obama administration has
sought to highlight cooperation on climate change, but China’s commitments,
first made in 2014, have been less a concession to American pressure than a
restatement of its own goals. They include a promise for China’s carbon
emissions to reach a plateau or decline “around 2030,” but without any specific
target for reductions like those Mr. Obama pledged for the United States (25
percent of 2005 levels by 2025). That means China has plenty of room to
continue burning fossil fuels to power its economy.
“The story of the past eight years is not
mainly the pivot or the rebalance; it is the very substantial increases in
Chinese capacities since 2008,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, who helped formulate Mr.
Obama’s Asia strategy as his chief China adviser in the first term.
“How has the U.S. dealt with that?” he added.
“How has the U.S. confronted that?”
The Obama administration has experimented
with a variety of approaches: pledging to respect China’s “core interests” in
2009; shifting in 2011 to a more assertive stance — verging on containment — as
Mr. Obama articulated his pivot to Asia; then resisting China’s proposal in
2012 to embark on a new model of great-power relations.
To some critics, that was an inconsistent
strategy — one that alternately cheered or sowed anxiety among American allies,
and likewise alienated or emboldened China. Under Mr. Xi’s leadership, China
has made aggressive claims to shoals and reefs in the South China Sea, picking
fights with neighbors like the Philippines and Vietnam.
“This back and forth has, I think, exacerbated
what was already a growing problem with a China that was already more assertive
in the context of the financial crisis,” said Michael J. Green, who was the
chief Asia adviser on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush
administration and is now at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
But the administration’s defenders, like Mr.
Bader, argue that Mr. Obama was merely following in the tradition of
presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, dating back to Richard M. Nixon.
They have tried to manage China’s rise by drawing it into the international
system and prodding it to accept rules of the road in trade, navigation and
other areas.
However, China has dismissed a recent ruling
by an international tribunal in The Hague that rebuked its aggressive
reclamation of land on disputed shoals in the South China Sea and invalidated
its historical claims to a large swath of those waters.
Mr. Obama was expected to press Mr. Xi to
abide by the ruling in a meeting after the climate ceremony, less because he
expected the Chinese leader to reverse himself than because the ruling is a
vital predicate for undermining the legitimacy of China’s imperial claims.
Still, even after Mr. Obama deployed Navy ships
to the Pacific, sent Marines to Australia and paid for greater access to the
military bases of an old ally, the Philippines, China now has greater control
of the South China Sea than it enjoyed at the start of his presidency.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s struggle to pass the
Trans-Pacific Partnership has stoked doubts about America’s economic staying
power. The 12-nation pact, which excludes China, has become the centerpiece of
the pivot to Asia. But it has fallen victim to election-year politics at home
and now seems unlikely to pass, even in a lame-duck Congress.
Some of the nations that signed on,
particularly Japan — America’s most important Asian ally and a nervous neighbor
of China — have made political sacrifices by opening markets in order to meet
the standards demanded by the United States. Failure to pass the trade pact,
Asian diplomats and analysts said, would leave them feeling burned.
“The Japanese, living in an uncertain world,
depending on an American nuclear umbrella, will have to say on trade: ‘The
Americans could not follow through,’” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of
Singapore said during a recent visit to Washington, standing next to Mr. Obama.
“If it’s a matter of life and death, whom do I have to depend on?”
Mr. Obama and his chief trade negotiator,
Michael B. Froman, understand the stakes. They plan a full-court press to sell
the pact on this presidential trip — characterizing its passage as a litmus
test of American leadership — in hopes that the message will echo back home.
“We are one vote away from cementing our
leadership in Asia or ceding it to China,” Mr. Froman said in an interview in
Beijing. “I’m not sure Congress wants to hand the keys to the castle to China.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is viewed in
Asia as the handiwork of Mr. Obama in particular, especially since the
Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly backed it when
she was Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, has renounced her support. If Congress
fails to pass it, Asian diplomats said, China will emerge as a victor.
“It will be a political disaster and play
into the Chinese narrative that China is a geopolitical fact, whereas the U.S.
presence is the consequence of a geopolitical calculation which could change
and thus is not reliable,” said Bilahari Kausikan, the ambassador at large for
Singapore.
In practical terms, the United States would
lose the chance to shape the economic future of the region, allowing China to
forge ahead with its “Sino-centric economic order,” which includes a
multibillion-dollar project to build a new Silk Road linking Asia to Europe.
Mr. Bader is among several American officials
who are guardedly confident that the next presidential administration will find
a way to win approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, perhaps by adding side
agreements on contentious points. But he expressed concern that the South China
Sea would be a chronic source of friction.
“The situation hasn’t stabilized,” Mr. Bader
said. “Achieving that is beyond the capacity of the U.S. alone.”
China has extended its military reach there
by building artificial islands with airfields, facilities that American commanders
have said they regard as military bases. Although China appears to be taking
stock of the situation since the unfavorable ruling in The Hague, Chinese
military officials warn that they will continue with their building program in
the waterway.
“China will never stop our construction,” the
head of China’s navy, Adm. Wu Shengli, said in July.
Last month, China took delivery of a dredger,
one of the biggest in its inventory, from a Dutch shipyard. The vessel would be
suitable for dredging at Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef 150 miles from the
Philippines.
China, some academics say, plans to create an
extremely large artificial island that would complete a strategic triangle of
bases in the sea.
“Obama is seen as reluctant to push back,”
said Alan Dupont, a former defense intelligence analyst for the Australian
government. “He has allowed China to militarize the islands in the South China
Sea. The United States hasn’t put it at the top of its list.”
To reassure its allies, Mr. Dupont said, the
United States would have to reinforce its military presence in the Pacific even
further than it has under Mr. Obama’s pivot, or rebalance, as it has also been
called.
