The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

turns in the U.S.-China relations are disturbing. Henry
Kissinger, perhaps the only surviving architect of the
U.S.-China relations we know of today, was undoubtedly
concerned. “Avoiding a U.S.-China Cold War”
was his disquieting call. 211 These concerns eventually
required highest-level attention and forced the two
governments to turn Chinese President Hu Jintao’s
long-delayed goodwill visit to the United States into a
“presidential conflict management workshop” in January
2011. However, this presidential meeting clearly
had not made much progress. Although the two presidents
listed 20-plus important areas where the United
States and China could cooperate, they nevertheless
could not reach agreement on the two nations’ core
national interests. The opposing stands are clearly
evident in the joint statement following the meeting.
The two differing statements below cannot be any
more disagreeable. They remind us of the terms in the
Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 in which the United
States and China awkwardly agreed to disagree.
The United States stressed that the promotion of human
rights and democracy is an important part of its
foreign policy. China stressed that there should be no
interference in any country’s internal affairs. 212
China has long held that the United States uses
promotion of democracy as a pretext to advance its interests.
In this Obama-Hu “workshop,” China apparently
took the U.S. insistence on its policy to promote
human rights and democracy in China as another U.S.
disregard of China’s core interest (an attack on Dai
Bingguo’s first point about China’s political system)
and therefore fought back. Kissinger was quick to
point out that “if the United States bases its approach
180