Why the U.S. can’t ignore or alienate the rising power of China – Part 2

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• GWEN IFILL:

  And Margaret joins me now.

  Other than getting away from bad electoral news here, what is the president hoping to accomplish on this trip, Margaret?

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Well, last week, when Secretary Kerry said that the U.S.-China relationship was the most consequential one in the world and would do a lot to shape this century, and that really to me summed up the opportunities and the dilemma for the president.

  So, on the one hand, you have China, a rising power, challenging U.S. dominance in that part of the world really for more than half-a-century, and with a kind of aggressiveness, assertiveness territorially that is kind of new.

  But Washington can't approach this like some 20th century grand rivalry because the U.S. needs China, not just economically, but on a lot of these issues like climate change, like Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions that the U.S. can't really solve without China.

  And so the dilemma is, you know, how to incorporate concerns that the U.S. has about China's performance on human rights, on cyber-theft, on a whole raft of issues, without totally alienating the Chinese. And you saw that today when you listened his comments, the president's, about the Hong Kong protests, because though he said, please, you need to exercise restraint, he was very restrained himself and he acknowledged there was a complicated relationship with Hong Kong.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Is that because he has a more complicated with Beijing or a less one than last time, when he and President Xi met in California?

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Well, in California, that was more of a "get to know, can we build a new relationship" session.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Yes.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  But it's certainly different than he went to China last time, in '09, where right off the financial crisis the Chinese kept lecturing him about the state of the American economy, you caused this, we're weathering it well.

  Now that has been reversed. The U.S. economy is doing better than — not better than the Chinese, but the Chinese are having problems. But basically I would say that the White House still took note of the elections, went in to trip determined to demonstrate to the Chinese that this is no lame-duck president and that in fact White House officials have been telling their counterparts in China his hand will be strengthened in Asia-Pacific because you're going to have Republicans in charge of the Senate, they will be willing to spend more on the security side in Asia and they will more open to this TPP, which China doesn't like one bit.

• GWEN IFILL:

  The Trans-Pacific Partnership.

  But on this very day, we hear about Chinese hacking of U.S. Postal Service and there have been regular reports of this. Are there tensions there? We saw tension between Abe and Xi, but are there also tensions between the U.S. and its partners, potential partners?

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Huge, huge, particularly on cyber-security.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Right.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  And you can expect — Susan Rice, the national security, said they would have candid conversations.

  You can expect him to raise this. But the U.S. argument is, look, we know each spy on one another as governments, but you all also spy to steal secrets and designs for American companies to give to Chinese rivals. We don't do that. And they agree to disagree on that, I think.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Yes.

  Well, as the president was arriving in Beijing came news or as he was on his way that two American detainees who have been held in North Korea were released. Is that a coincidence?

• MARGARET WARNER:

  It's unclear because you can never know, Gwen, what's in the mind of Kim Jong-un or any North Korean leader.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Right.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  I would say not directly. Certainly, I haven't been told that Chinese — it was Chinese pressure.

  But China's always been the kind of buffer and protector of North Korea. That said, the new Chinese leadership regards the new North Korean leadership as a little bit, one person said to me, wacko. Their relationship with and influence with North Korea is not as great as it was.

  And it is possible that this new human rights report that has — that — that documented sort of systematic or gross violations they called it in the North Korea prison system may have meant that Kim Jong-un and his folks were nervous they would be referred to the Criminal Court, and maybe they decided it might be — make it easier for China to protect them on that, but we really don't know.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Timing is everything. However, it's hard not to see it that way.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Yes.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Margaret Warner, thank you.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  As always.