Air Force One landing in CHina.
Obama has a forum meeting in town hall in Shanghai.Q&A 8 questions. ONly broadcast locally.
A clear majority of Americans see China as an economic threat, a poll showed Monday, as Barack Obama sought to bolster relations on his first trip to Beijing and Shanghai as president.
More than 70 percent of those questioned in the CNN poll said they considered the Asian giant to be an economic threat, while only 28 percent disagreed with the notion.
Two-thirds of those surveyed said they saw China as a source of unfair competition for American companies, while only a quarter viewed China positively as a huge potential market for US goods.
"That may be why 71 percent of Americans consider China an economic threat to the US," said CNN polling director Keating Holland. "Americans tend to view foreign countries as competition, and China is no exception."
Trade tensions between the powers have intensified in recent months, with both sides taking action against the other's imports.
Obama ignited the first major trade spat of his presidency when he imposed punitive duties on Chinese-made tires in September.
An angry Beijing lodged a complaint at the World Trade Organization and retaliated by launching a probe into possible unfair trade practices involving imports of US car products and chicken meat.
The CNN poll Monday showed that Americans were split on whether China posed a military threat with slightly more, 51 percent, agreeing with the statement than disagreeing (47 percent).
A quarter of the 1,014 people questioned in the weekend poll said China had a good track record on human rights, but 68 percent suggested the rights of Chinese citizens were not being respected.
Obama, in booming Shanghai Monday, pushed for an unshackled Internet and expanded political freedoms during a webcast town hall event.
On Chinese state television's evening news, Obama's visit was not even mentioned until 25 minutes into the broadcast. The main dispatch on the state news agency Xinhua on the Shanghai event did not include Obama's comments on Internet freedoms.
President Barack Obama meets again with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, today to continue what the U.S. leader called “a meeting of the minds” about how their nations can lead on global issues.
During a town-hall session with university students yesterday in Shanghai, Obama said a deeper relationship between the U.S. and China is critical to economic growth in both countries and essential to confronting global issues such as climate change. The agenda will also include discussions on trade, currency, the global economy, North Korea and Iran.
Obama arrived at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing this morning to begin a meeting with Hu. The two leaders are scheduled to make remarks at 12:15 p.m. Beijing time before Obama takes a tour of the Forbidden City.
Obama is “trying to reassure Beijing that we want a good constructive relationship, not trade protectionism, and on the other hand we’re trying to reassure Asia that we’re not going to acquiesce in a future Chinese hegemony in the region,” said Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute.
“That’s a delicate balance to put it mildly,” said Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Washington-based policy research group.
Conciliatory Tone
Obama has struck a mostly conciliatory tone toward China during the first half of his eight-day Asian trip. In Shanghai yesterday, Obama told his student audience that the U.S. “insists we do not seek to contain China’s rise.”
“On the contrary, we welcome China as a strong and prosperous and successful member of the community of nations --a China that draws on the rights, strengths, and creativity of individual Chinese like you,” he said.
Still, the president used the same forum to prod China on human rights and freedom. In addition to speaking to and taking questions from a group of about 400 students selected by their universities, Obama also answered queries submitted via the Internet.
That provided him an opening to talk about “universal rights” of freedom of expression and religion for all people and groups “whether they are in the United States, China, or any nation.”
Internet Access
He also called unfettered Internet access a source of strength for any nation. China, with more than 330 million Internet users, blocks access to Web sites such as the Facebook social network and those dealing with sensitive political issues such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising.
“Unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think, should be encouraged,” Obama said, adding that the criticism he receives in the U.S. “makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”
Obama focused primarily on areas of cooperation during the hour-long forum and will seek to strengthen those ties in his meetings today, administration officials have said. Climate change was one prominent area in which Obama said the U.S. and China have an opportunity to lead the world together.
“Unless both of our countries are willing to take critical steps” to deal with carbon emissions, “we will not be able to resolve it,” Obama said.
Peter Morici, a professor of business at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, said “the Obama approach of ‘we’re in this together’ has failed with China” because “the Chinese view foreign policy in terms of national interest, not global community.”
If the U.S. caps emissions China will not follow suit, and that will create more manufacturing jobs in China and “an opening to further exploit American weakness,” Morici said.
Trade
Trade and the global economy are other top issues for Obama while in China, the third stop on a four-nation trip to Asia. He told his audience yesterday that trade between the U.S. and China has driven economic growth in both countries and that a more balanced relationship will provide greater prosperity.
“This trade could create even more jobs on both sides of the Pacific,” Obama said. “As demand becomes more balanced it could lead to even broader prosperity.”
The administration estimates that every percentage point of increase in U.S. exports to Asia could create 250,000 U.S. jobs, according to Michael Froman, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economics.
His comments come after the weekend’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore, where some leaders expressed concern about his commitment to free trade.
Import Duties
Obama decided in September to impose duties of 35 percent on $1.8 billion of automobile tires imported from China. A month later, the U.S. imposed duties of as much as 99 percent on Chinese steel pipe after American producers led by U.S. Steel Corp. complained that the imports were being dumped at below- market prices.
While Obama has credited China’s economic stimulus efforts with aiding the global recovery, he said before leaving Washington that he expected to raise the issue of China’s currency peg to the dollar.
China has kept the yuan at about 6.83 per dollar since July 2008. Some lawmakers in the U.S. have been calling for the administration to put more pressure on the Chinese, saying the yuan’s value is unfairly undercutting U.S. companies.
China’s Comment
A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce said yesterday that international pressure for appreciation of the yuan “is not conducive to a global economic recovery and is not fair.”
The spokesman, Yao Jian, said at a press briefing in Beijing that China must provide “a stable and predictable environment in terms of macro-economic and exchange rate policies.”
In addition to economic issues, Obama’s agenda includes pressing China to take a tougher stance on Iran, which the U.S. says is seeking to develop nuclear weapons capability. China has been reluctant to back more sanctions against the Islamic republic.
Over the weekend in Singapore, Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev and Obama said time was running out for Iran to accept terms of a deal offered by international negotiators and suggested they are moving closer to discussions new sanctions against Iran.
China also is a key player in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
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