With China’s first lady beaming beside him, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping emerged from his Boeing Air China jet and walked down the red carpet at Paine Field Airport in Washington state on Sept. 22. The clear Seattle sun stood in contrast to the cloud of disputes that has loomed over Xi’s weeklong state visit—a trip that China needs much more than the United States, according to analysts of China’s foreign policy.
The Obama administration has blamed China for a round of cyberattacks aimed at American government agencies in June, and various massive incursions against businesses whose trade secrets have been pilfered.
China’s aggressive island-building in contentious South China Sea waters has been a sore point for the United States—but the U.S. military has held off on an aggressive demonstration of freedom of navigation. And while Chinese security forces have engaged in a crippling crackdown on Chinese lawyers and activists who defend the downtrodden, U.S. officials have not turned human rights into a central issue in the relationship.
Given how much the Chinese Communist Party needs the relationship to succeed, it’s unusual that the United States hasn’t exploited its leverage much more.
“What China wants from the United States is much more than what the United States wants from China,” said Chen Kuide, the executive director of the Princeton China Initiative and chief editor of the publication China in Perspective, in a telephone interview.
The communist regime “wants America to help with their development, and when they’re powerful enough, they'll disrupt the global order,” he said.
