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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Are McCain and Obama seeing eye to eye on China?
Two of Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers are in China this week.
A chance for Obama to gain an advantage over the Republican John McCain in terms of relations with China?
Not really.
With its growing military might and economic clout, you might think China would spark policy debates between McCain and Obama.
But there are no significant differences between McCain and Obama when it comes to China, says Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who advises Obama. “There is no alternative but engagement” with China, Daalder said in Beijing.
Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution speaking at Beijing’s Tsinghua University on Wednesday, said he also has been “struck by the degree at which China is not a big issue in this election.” Gordon also advises Obama.
Obama and McCain may want to keep China out of the spotlight. While China has been an easy target for past presidential candidates (Bill Clinton promised in his 1992 campaign that he would not “coddle dictators from Beijing to Baghdad”), whoever is elected will have to deal with the Asian behemoth.
The similar approaches of Obama and McCain have left Chinese intellectuals silent about which candidate they favor.
“You almost don’t see any strong views in the Chinese intelligentsia toward the two candidates,” said Xiao Geng, the director of a Brookings Institution center at Tsinghua University.
“Whoever is elected basically will go back to expected policies,” he said. “The relationship is too important.”
