With ties between Washington and many close allies strained because of eavesdropping revelations and differences over US policies in the Middle East, the Obama administration can take some comfort from an improvement in ties with China.
A year after China’s President Xi Jinping took over the helm of the country’s ruling Communist Party, senior US officials say they see increased cooperation on a range of issues from climate change to North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
They also regard greater bilateral military contacts as an important safety valve if there are any potential flare-ups.
On the economic front, Washington is focused on China’s November 9-12 Communist Party conclave where Xi’s blueprint for making the world’s second-largest economy more open is expected to be unveiled.
Xi’s administration already has spawned optimism with an agreement to reopen bilateral investment treaty talks and a pilot free trade zone in Shanghai that augurs well for deeper reforms to address Chinese investment and trade barriers.
Both could help dent the $300 billion annual US trade deficit with China.
Not all is rosy. Serious fault lines remain over issues that have long vexed the Sino-US relationship, such as human rights. Western experts and Chinese activists are concerned that China’s record on human rights may be worsening under Xi, who became China’s president in March, given there have been crackdowns on lawyers, activists and Internet opinion leaders.
Potential discord also lurks in China’s recent increasing recourse to what its critics call gunboat diplomacy in maritime territorial disputes with Asian neighbours, including US allies such as Japan and the Philippines.
But officials from both countries say they are committed to what China calls a “new model of major country relations” - a Xi mantra that aims to minimise Sino-US rivalry as China’s global power grows.
To Washington, the concept means “there is room on planet Earth for a rising, strong, stable, prosperous China and a United States that continues to serve as the champion of a liberal, democratic, free-market and rules-based system,” said Daniel Russel, the State Department’s top Asia diplomat.
Washington and Beijing intend to “avoid a mechanistic dynamic in which a rising power and an enduring power were inevitably destined for conflict,” he added.
The most common concrete example US officials give of a better working relationship is North Korea, whose nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs are seen as one of Asia’s most serious security threats.
Washington has long sought to convince Beijing to do more to rein in Pyongyang, a Chinese ally since the Korean War. North Korea’s nuclear test in early 2013, the latest of three since 2006, was accompanied by threats of nuclear attack on the United States and South Korea.
“We’ve seen (China) be more forward-leaning in applying pressure on the North Koreans,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.
“That’s in part because the cycle of provocation that was taking place in the spring was concerning to them because it was destabilising the region ... and ultimately it was not consistent with their own interest,” he told Reuters.
China, often criticised by the United States and its allies for weak enforcement of UN Security Council sanctions on the North, last month published a detailed list of technologies and goods banned from export to North Korea because of their potential use in weapons of mass destruction.
Priority issues
The narrowing of differences on North Korea was a key outcome from Xi’s informal summit with President Barack Obama last June in Rancho Mirage, California - a desert retreat that allowed the two leaders to meet for eight hours over two days.
That informal summit, mainly designed as a trust-building exercise, also produced an agreement to reduce the use of greenhouse gases and to launch a bilateral working group to hold regular discussions on cyber-security.
“The US and China are cooperating not on boutique projects, not on off-Broadway, where it doesn›t really matter, but on priority, critical issues that genuinely matter to both of our people and genuinely matter to the region and the world,” said Russel, who attended the summit, in an interview.
In early 2012, when Xi was China’s vice president, he toured the United States as a guest of US counterpart Joe Biden, visiting a small town in Iowa where he did a brief home stay in 1987, as well as Los Angeles and Washington.
The Washington trip included a visit to the Pentagon, which helped set up a packed 2013-14 calendar of exchanges between the two countries’ militaries. Military-to-military ties have long been the weakest link between the two powers.