E-mail a friendChristine Chen
airdate April 19, 2006
Christine Chen joined Foreign Policy magazine last year as a senior editor. She's responsible for commissioning and editing reviews, feature articles and essays. She was previously a writer-reporter at Fortune magazine and contributed to its sister magazines, Business 2.0 and FSB: Fortune Small Business. Chen also worked at Newsweek International as an editorial liaison for the magazine's foreign language editions and reported on a wide range of topics for both the its online and print editions.
Christine Chen
Tavis: A look now at the U.S. visit of the Chinese President Hu Jintao with Christine Chen, senior editor at "Foreign Policy" magazine. Formerly, she worked as a reporter for 'Fortune' magazine, and was a Fulbright scholar at the London School of Economics. She joins us tonight from Washington. Christine, nice to have you on the program.
Christine Chen: Thank you very much for having me, it's an honor.
Tavis: It's my pleasure to have you here. Let me try to break our conversation up into two parts, if I might, so that it's usable for all of us who are participating as we speak. Let me start with his agenda, why President Hu Jintao is here, and what he hopes to accomplish. So, what does he want from us?
Chen: Well, President Hu was actually supposed to be here for a visit last September, but then Hurricane Katrina hit, so the trip was postponed until now. He's here for a few regions. One, because obviously the relationship between the U.S. and China is hugely important for them and for us. We are the most powerful country in the world, and he's here to talk about a couple of different things.
One, about trade between the two countries and about investment going both ways, and the other thing he'll likely talk about tomorrow with President Bush will be the issue of Taiwan.
Tavis: Let's take them one at a time. The issue of trade. What are his thoughts? What's the issue here?
Chen: Well, the issue is that at the moment we're running a $202 billion trade deficit with China. And so, U.S. lawmakers are concerned about how that's gonna play out in the future. President Hu wants to reassure the U.S. that it will play fairly, that will continue to invest in U.S. companies and in U.S. technologies, and that China's also open to further investment from the U.S.
Tavis: Tell me how he convinces us of that beyond buying a bunch of planes. We all know, those who've been following the story know, that he wrote a big check the other day for a bunch of Boeing aircraft. Tell me more about that and what he can do beyond buying Boeing airplanes that convinces the American public, certainly business leaders and politicians, that he's serious about China spending money and making sure it works both ways.
Chen: Well, President Hu started his trip yesterday in Seattle. He was there yesterday and earlier today, and Washington State is just a huge source of business for China. Just the trade between the state alone and China is enormous. And while he was there, he met with Bill Gates of Microsoft. He also visited Boeing, where he made this deal that you were talking about, which was an agreement to purchase 80 Boeing 737's.
And he also visited with Howard Shultz of Starbucks. Starbucks is doing huge business in China, and they predict in a few years, there'll be thousands of them. And with Boeing, this deal is actually pretty big. It's not just a few planes. The deal is worth about five billion dollars, and if you look out over the next 15 to 20 years, China will likely be ordering some 2,000, 2,500 aircraft.
So this is not, this is just the beginning of a big relationship. I think his visit to Seattle in a way is symbolic, because there is such great business there and also because he's likely, he's gotten a friendly reception there. In terms of Microsoft, that's also a big deal, because one of the big problems the U.S. has with China is piracy, of course.
And so not long ago, Lenovo, which is a PC maker which actually bought IBM's personal computer business last year, they signed a very big deal with Microsoft to agree to preinstall Windows on their computers, which would prevent further piracy from going on. So that's all positive news.
Tavis: Let me ask you, you mentioned a word a moment ago I wanna pick up on. You talked about, you used the word symbolism or symbolic. Is it at all symbolic, or is there something more substantive to the notion that he is having these meetings with these business leaders before he gets to the President in Washington? Is he trying to make a statement here?
Chen: I don't know that he's trying to make a statement, per se. I think, geographically, it makes sense; Seattle is on the way from Washington to Beijing. And previous Chinese leaders have who have visited, previous leaders, they've often made stops on the west coast before they come to Washington.
I think for President Hu, symbolically, it might actually be good for him at home, internally within China, to first land in Seattle and have a very positive reception, and hopefully build on that momentum coming into this meeting tomorrow with President Bush. So he'll have something to report back home about deals that have been signed and the warm reception he's received by American business leaders.
Tavis: All right, so back to your earlier point. Given that we all know this relationship between the U.S. and China is so very important, we've now talked about what President Hu wants to accomplish on this trip. What does President Bush want to accomplish tomorrow, and what do American business interests want China to do?
Chen: Well, I think what President Bush's top topic will be tomorrow will likely be the trade deficit. The fact that it is $202 billion. There's a lot of pressure from Congress to do something about this, perhaps in the way of tariffs or sanctions, and I think President Hu wants to make sure that the U.S. doesn't do that. And I think President Bush wants to make sure that China continues to play fair.
Also at issue is the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan, which a lot of people believe is undervalued, which makes Chinese exports extremely cheap in the global market. President Hu, they did raise the value by about two percent last year, but Americans are thinking that's still not enough. And I think that this is going to be very much the top topic on the table tomorrow.
I think, obviously, there are also wider security issues at issue. There's going to be the issue of Iran developing their nuclear energy and there is going to be the issue of North Korea.
Tavis: What about the issue of human rights?
Chen: Human rights will also be very important. It's always very important when talking to China. I think a couple of things are here at stake. One is, there was an interesting report in "The Washington Post" this morning about a North Korean defector who went to China and was sent back by Beijing and "The Washington Post" reported that Bush will possibly talk about that with President Hu.
I think another very big thing is the freedom of speech within China. Google and Microsoft and Yahoo have all in the past year done these deals with China and also helped China, in a way, in cracking down on what they perceive to be as information that goes against the Chinese government. That's a controversial issue.
Google, for example, censors Chinese websites. If you go to Google.com and type in Tiananmen Square, you're not going to see anything about the democracy protests in 1989.
Tavis: Let me close our conversation, Christine, by asking at this point in this cat and mouse game, this chess game, if you will, both sides clearly have leverage. Does one side have more leverage, the U.S. or China?
Chen: I don't think it's necessarily a matter of zero sum leverage one over the other. I think that there are certain goals that the China and U.S. do have in common. For example, keeping Iran's nuclear development in check. Making sure North Korea is in check. I think the debate will be over how to achieve those goals, and that's where the differences lie.
Tavis: Christine Chen is senior editor for "Foreign Policy" magazine. She and a lot of the rest of us are covering this trip by the president of China, President Hu. It's an important trip where these relations are concerned, and we will stay on top of it. Christine, though, nice to have you on the program. Thank you for your insight, I appreciate your expertise.
Chen: Thank you very much.
Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. Up next on this program, from "The West Wing,' Bradley Whitford. Hard to believe that this show is about to come to a close after what, seven or so seasons? But we'll talk to Bradley Whitford, the Chief of Staff, in just a moment. Stay with us.
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