Susan Shirk Quoted in LA Times on China's Diplomacy
China has a lot of peacemaking to do
12/23/2010
Barbara Demick,
Los Angeles Times
Now for the damage control.
After taking a pounding in the court of world opinion in recent months, the Chinese government hopes to repair an image tarnished by the public relations fiasco of the Nobel Peace Prize and a series of foreign policy gaffes.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is to be received by President Obama on Jan. 19, with an official state dinner and Oval Office meeting scheduled, the White House announced Thursday. China has toned down its blatant public support for North Korea, urging Pyongyang to accept nuclear inspections and to refrain from further threats to South Korea.
"At the end of the day, Hu needs a successful summit,'' said Michael Green, a former top Asia advisor to President George W. Bush and now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He added, however, that "it might be tactical, rather than a forthright recognition that China needs to compromise."
For a leadership that sailed through the global financial crisis with nary a misstep, the Chinese have proved surprisingly inept at diplomacy. Beijing's assertive — critics say thuggish — behavior in the international arena has undermined an image it had long cultivated as a gentle giant whose prosperity would only enrich its neighbors.
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Susan Shirk is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and Ho Miu Lam professor of China and Pacific Relations at IR/PS.
She founded in 1993 and continues to lead the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
