By Shannon Tiezzi
Susan Rice’s trip to China shows that Washington and Beijing have different goals for the relationship.
While China was celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival on Monday, at least one Chinese official was hard at work: State Councilor Yang Jiechi, who acted as the host for U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Rice was in Beijing from September 7 to 9, her first visit to China since assuming her current position. Rice met with Yang as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and General Fan Changlong, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission.
The main goal of Rice’s visit, as Zach noted previously, was to lay the groundwork for President Obama’s November visit to China. Obama will be attending the APEC leader’s summit in Beijing before taking part in an informal meeting with Xi Jinping, a follow-up to their 2013 meeting at Sunnylands in California. State Councilor Yang and Rice discussed the upcoming visit in their meeting, with Rice saying that Obama is looking forward to a chance to meeting with Xi again. Foreign Minister Wang Yi also emphasized the importance of Obama’s trip to China (only his second since taking office). “Both China and the U.S. should make sure Obama’s China tour is productive and sends a clear signal that the two countries are fully capable of working together to make the world more peaceful,” Wang told Rice.
Throughout the meetings, both sides placed a heavy emphasis on the global implications of U.S.-China relations. Rice repeated the Obama administration’s position that the U.S.-China bilateral relationship is one of the most important in the world. Upon her arrival in Beijing, Rice tweeted, “Most major global challenges of [the] 21st century cannot be addressed effectively without U.S. and China working together,” a sentiment she also emphasized in her meetings. Rice said that Obama had asked her to visit China, despite a multitude of other issues on the global agenda, because of the priority Obama places on the U.S.-China relations. Rice and Yang listed the usual issues as areas for potential cooperation: economics, counter-terrorism, environmental protection, the Korean nuclear question, and security concerns in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Read the full story at The Diplomat