ARAVUA: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is missing the Democratic Party
convention to build ties in Asia as the US relationship with China increasingly
encroaches on politics back home.
Clinton, the most travelled
Secretary of State in US history, was heading Sunday from a summit in the
remote Cook Islands to Indonesia before she meets China's top leaders Tuesday
and Wednesday in Beijing.
She will represent President
Barack Obama at an Asia-Pacific summit in Vladivostok on September 8-9. The
president formally launches his re-election bid at this week's Democratic
convention in North Carolina.
Since narrowly losing the party
nomination to Obama in 2008, Clinton has devoted her energy to foreign policy
and carefully stayed out of domestic politics -- never showing an inch of
public distance with her former rival while also maintaining cordial
relationships with the rival Republican Party.
But China -- a major priority
throughout her term -- has increasingly become a focus of Republican attacks
with Obama's opponent Mitt Romney vowing a harder line on issues including
trade, human rights and the military balance.
Representative Paul Ryan,
Romney's pick for vice president, said that a Republican administration would
do more to crack down on China's "cheating" on trade including
"stealing" of US intellectual property.
Obama "said he'd go to the
mat with China. Instead they're treating him like a doormat," Ryan told a
rally in August in battleground state Ohio.
Romney has vowed that he would
declare immediately that China is manipulating its currency by keeping the yuan
artificially low and has accused Obama of keeping the US military "vastly
under-resourced."
The Obama administration, while
supporting some cuts in military spending, plans to reinforce the US presence
in Asia and argues that it has filed a record number of trade complaints
against China.
Clinton, asked in the Cook
Islands about China's growing influence in the South Pacific, said that the
United States wanted a "comprehensive, positive, cooperative
relationship" between the world's two largest economies.
"We think it is good for our
country, it's good for our people and, in fact, it's not only good for this
region, it's good for the world," Clinton told reporters.
Clinton said that the United
States also spoke "very frankly" on disagreements. She is expected in
Asia to reaffirm calls for freedom of navigation in South China Sea, where
Southeast Asian nations have accused Beijing of growing assertiveness.
China's state media have accused
Clinton of seeking to "contain" the rising power through her trip,
although Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai sounded a more conciliatory note in
the Cook Islands.
The state-run Xinhua news agency
has had harsher words for Romney, accusing him of "poisoning the general
atmosphere of US-China relations" through his "blame-China
game."
Former US presidents Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush also campaigned for a tougher line on Beijing -- Clinton's
1992 campaign spoke of the "butchers of Beijing" over the Tiananmen
Square crackdown -- but chose cooperation once they entered the White House.
Still, Romney's promises are
unusually specific. Nina Hachigian, a senior fellow at the Center for American
Progress, a left-leaning think tank, said that branding China a currency
manipulator would serve no purpose but potentially set off a trade war.
"It's not that we need to
play 'nice' with China. We just need to find the best ways to further American
interests. Basic human common sense suggests we should not anger China's top
leaders and get nothing for it," Hachigian said.
Romney has also been strongly
critical of Obama on Russia, calling Moscow the "number one geopolitical
foe" of the United States.
Ernie Bower of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies said he expected Clinton to "play it
straight" on her trip and leave political squabbles up to Obama and his
political team.
"Even for the Republicans,
if you talk to the Romney people, they think that she has done a pretty good
job," Bower said.
Clinton, who turns 65 next month,
has repeatedly said that she will retire at the end of Obama's term in January
regardless of the election and is not interested in another run for the White
House.
But Clinton -- a hate figure for
the right when she was first lady -- is now ranked in polls as one of the most
popular US political figures, fuelling constant chatter of a new White House
campaign in 2016.
Bill Clinton, who had an uneasy
relationship with Obama in 2008 but has since rallied to his side, will deliver
a key speech for him at the Democratic convention.
- AFP/wm
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