Posts tagged with: United States
China, Publications, U.S. Policy »
Apple's first retail store in China, located in Beijing. A bilateral investment treaty would give U.S.-based companies like Apple greater rights in China, while attracting more Chinese investment into the United States.
Date: 8 April 2011.
Publication: The Huffington Post.
Author: Daniel Michaeli.
In recent years, Beijing has asked repeatedly for a treaty that would give U.S. investors in China greater and more enforceable rights. It is high time for the Obama administration to respond seriously — by concluding its open-ended review of bilateral investment treaties and working one out with China. The U.S. and China should work aggressively over the next several weeks to prepare to announce a timeline for negotiations at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington next month.
American firms have nearly $50 billion invested in China, and a recent survey of companies investing in China indicates that most intend to increase their investments substantially this year. The performance of these investments is crucial to the U.S. economy: they enable American companies to access China’s huge domestic market and catalyze American exports — U.S. multinationals send half of their total exports from the United States to their own foreign affiliates. American corporations, when successful overseas, bring jobs and investment back to the United States. Recent data indicates that U.S.-based multinational corporations locate more than half of their employees in the United States, where they have 70 percent of their operations and spend 87 percent of their research and development budget.
China, Press, U.S. Policy »
Media: Colombia National Radio – “Coffee and News” Morning Show (Live).
Subjects: Issues likely to come up in the state visit; human rights; valuation of the Chinese Renminbi and risk of a “currency war.”
Length: 8:07.
India, Publications, U.S. Policy »
Image courtesy of Flickr's tomdz
Date: 8 November 2010.
Publication: The Huffington Post.
Author: Daniel Michaeli.
The future of American global influence will be decided in Asia, and India’s success could be a prerequisite for America’s long-term position in the region. So President Obama just made a substantial step towards securing U.S. interests in Asia by endorsing India’s aspiration to greater global and regional influence. He declared today in New Delhi, “I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.” Indians have been waiting for this for a long time.
Successive U.S. administrations have avoided taking a position on India’s Security Council aspirations. Diplomatic non-answers denied New Delhi a clear path to U.S. backing, a source of exasperation for many Indians. And the U.S. approach also obscured legitimate American concerns about the limits of U.S.-Indian cooperation on some foreign policy issues of great importance to the United States.
The only problem is that when Obama endorsed India’s membership “look[ing] forward,” he actually ignored these legitimate concerns, too.
China, Miscellaneous, U.S. Policy »
Can the United States Keep China at Bay?
Southeast Asians want the United States active and engaged in the region, and the U.S. is clearly trying to deliver. But Southeast Asian countries cannot hope to receive full U.S. support in the South China Sea until they resolve ongoing disputes among themselves.
This burst of U.S. activity in Southeast Asia is, in part, a response to China’s recent assertiveness, particularly in the maritime space (more on that here). Southeast Asians hope drawing the United States more deeply into the region can help balance China’s heft in multilateral organizations and deter China from using force to resolve territorial disputes, even as Southeast Asians beef up their own defense capabilities.
Map of the South China Sea (1988). (Source: University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)
China, Miscellaneous »
Consequences of the Cheonan Attack
U.S. Navy photograph by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Richard J. Brunson
On Friday, the UN Security Council came out with a weak statement that failed to assign blame for the attack and sinking of a South Korean naval ship in March. China and Russia declined to participate in an international inquiry, watered down the Security Council statement, and now willfully look the other way as North Korea continues denying its involvement. The Council’s statement mentioned the results of the internationally-backed inquiry that showed a North Korean torpedo was responsible, but that was all.
Frankly, Korean president Lee Mung-bak failed to take advantage of the considerable leverage he had to press China to take a harder line against North Korean provocations. Lee made the understandable decision to reassure investors by ruling out military retaliation early on. But in doing so, he also took away what appears to be the only thing that would change China’s calculus on North Korea: the possibility of major escalation.
China, Publications, U.S. Policy »
Date: 24 May 2010.
Publication: The Huffington Post.
Authors: Daniel Michaeli and Joel Backaler.
Monday’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the United States and China provides the Obama administration with an opportunity to forge agreements in a number of areas of crucial significance for both U.S. economic competitiveness and strategic stability in Asia–but only if U.S. negotiators are willing to give non-headline topics the attention they deserve.
At this time of economic uncertainty, the future of the American economy is firmly linked to the ability of U.S. companies to compete for marketshare in China, the world’s fastest-growing market. So U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner’s agenda should not overstress the revaluation of China’s currency. Despite the degree of media attention paid to the issue, nearly 80% of U.S. firms in China don’t expect a revaluation to increase their profits, according to a recent American Chamber of Commerce in China survey. Rather, across a host of industries, Chinese commercial rules give domestic firms an unfair leg up over American ones, and this is the more significant reason U.S. companies have been unsuccessful in cracking the Chinese market.
Japan, U.S. Policy »
Ginowan City, with Futenma Air Base in the Center*
In negotiations between democracies, the atmosphere and public perceptions of the negotiations can matter even more than their paper outcome. In negotiations with Japan over relocating Futenma, the U.S. Marine Corps air station in the middle of Ginowan City, it’s time for the United States to recognize that. Maintaining an effective relationship with the Japanese public requires a policy change on Futenma relocation.
The U.S. bases much of its presence in Japan on Okinawa, an island strategically located near the Taiwan Strait. The tactical arguments for why the U.S. marines need to be in Okinawa province are compelling, even if the public relations effort at explaining it has been inept.
Marines operate as a combined air-land-sea force and these different elements would have to be brought to bear together, and quickly, in the event of a crisis–such as an attack on Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. The new V-22 Osprey transport aircraft the Marines plan to deploy there can take off and land vertically, but apparently requires a new long runway “just in case” due to reliability issues.
But the reason the U.S.-Japan relationship works is, more than anything else, strategic rather than tactical. Japan–and, for that matter, Taiwan (as I noted here)–are able to develop closer ties with mainland China because they understand the United States is committed to ensuring their security. The reason the United States is able to protect its allies and economic interests in the region is because commitments have been made in treaties and are consistently repeated at the highest levels. That is a strategic, not a tactical, matter.