The secretary-general, in a recent group interview with the UN-based Chinese media, said that, “I most warmly welcome President Xi Jinping”. The guests included Cook, Nadella, Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, and many other bigwigs. In addition to the important actions announced by China that establish a nationwide cap-and-trade system, green power sector reforms, and other policies, I welcome its commitment of $3.1 billion to help poorer countries meet the climate challenge.
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Before visiting the US capital, Xi concluded a busy two-and-a-half-day stay in the West Coast technology and aviation hub of Seattle, where he put forward a four-point proposal on developing a new model of major-country relationship between China and the United States. Obama has declined to publicly assign blame to China for that breach.
The agreement to clamp down on the theft of trade secrets doesn’t address the theft of national security information, such as the tens of millions of us federal personnel records that American lawmakers and a few USA officials have said was engineered by Beijing.
The agreement may not be easy to enforce, particularly since it’s often hard to trace the source of cyberattacks and the Chinese government has never acknowledged a role in past attacks, said Betsy Page Sigman, a cybersecurity expert at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
On human rights, another sore spot between the nations, Obama said the two had a “frank discussion”.
China’s aid money matches a similar pledge made past year by Obama, though the money has yet to be delivered to the UN-backed Green Climate Fund because of Republican refusal to appropriate the funds. He said that while they did not discuss specific cases of alleged Chinese cybertheft, he mentioned the executive order he signed in April that authorized the imposition of economic sanctions for malicious cyber-acts.
– China and the United States should promote people-to-people exchange and consolidate the social basis for bilateral relations. In June during a visit to Paris, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced the nation’s ambitious targets for cutting energy consumption per unit of economic output by 60 to 65 percent from its 2005 level.
Xi denied there was a military build-up but added that the islands in the area were Chinese territory from “ancient times” and Beijing had the right to uphold its maritime rights. China will generate positive headlines while enjoying the economic benefits of generating electricity from coal, while US families struggling in the Obama economy will get stuck with higher utility bills.
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China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitting nation, estimated at 23 percent of the world’s total in 2008. There’s still plenty of work to be done in this area, with the potential to further boost the cooperation between the US and China.
