the power relationship between China and the world and particularly between US
and China
has really shifted and some very dramatic way
you all set in
when deng xiaoping arrived at Andrews Air Force Base
outside Washington in January 1979
this country was just emerging from a long revolutionary deep freeze
no one knew much about this 5-foot-4 tall
Chinese leader but in 1979
he knew exactly what he wanted better relations
with the US he and President Jimmy Carter
appear to be serious about resolving differences am
United States of America and the People's Republic of China have agreed
to recognize each other
and to establish diplomatic relations
and again where the person 1979
0 I remember very vividly when
go shopping went to Houston
and we all went out to a rodeo I mean here is done shopping he walks into the
serene and everybody sing
country-western song and up gallup so
tax assessor cheerleader type cowgirl
and put up ten-gallon hat on his head
and the crowd just one not
okay here's theater here's permission
for both countries to you now say it okay to
to get along it's okay to to have good relations with each other
a body language between deng xiaoping and Carter
0 I just on the trip in 1979 but subsequently was incredibly
a few shoveling perceptive and warm
right now we have a much shorter and cooler
more aloof kind leadership interaction
at a meeting between President Barack Obama and she Jim Hague
in June 2013 she suggested
trying to recapture some of the old carter deng magic
when he expressed his desire see the two countries
form a quote new kinda big power relationship
Shin Shin guy why should he implied that each country
should accept the other as it is the idea never really caught on
but this Sept here was jimmy carter
man who would help set the US china relationship in motion
back again in Beijing when jimmy carter
was going back named by me to come along and
I'll be really interesting to see how he was
received and if the chinese really did 100 reestablish
a kind of a warm I'm in the relationship
when Carter arrived back in Beijing the Sept his first stop was people's
University
we found ourselves thrust into the middle of a forum on Global Finance
one more the endless business conferences
now proliferating in China because the subject is safe
only after a forgettable addresses by the university president
and a former UN trade investment specialists from Argentina
was carter able to present short talk
followed by a single question watching this former US President
be treated so offhandedly highlighted how the power relationship between the
two countries
shifted it's now not only the West that has well
indeed China is expected to soon surpass the US
GDP %uh the two dynamic elements in the world today the US
trial and China is on the rise and
some people think US isn't something that the state of decline
remains to be seen although Carter had met
four times before with Xi Jinping on this visit he met neither with him
North Premier League coach I'll which seemed odd
because if they really do want better US-china relations
why ignore the man would once done so much to improve
the Chinese moreover and unceremoniously band one invited member of carter's
delegation
from speaking at a forum in the Great Hall of the People
carter himself soon learned his various host organizations
and cancelled or reorganized several events
and the carter center meeting for its young American and Chinese scholars
forum on us-china relations program was moved off the chart on campus
and into a hotel the high point of Carter's trip
was to be a banquet in the Great Hall of the People a cavernous
tone like edifice thrown up by not people
in 10 months during a great leap forward in 1959
its Vasai laws are calculated to all
and over while the dinner for Carter was disappointingly flat
it was hosted by vice president Miranshah
who gave a short speech that had none at the actively friendly town
would you characterize meetings thirty-five years ago
as we age minutes see if half empty tables
a Chinese professor whispered to me that president she just days earlier
had met with a zimbabwean President an international pariah
Robert Mugabe calling him an old friend
the Chinese people only respect very much
he went on to say but she was actually in the Great Hall of the People
toasting Malaysian supreme head of state Abdul Haleem was ordained Shaw
at the very moment of our dinner but she didn't stop by the carter dinner
to say a word I found it so depressing I laughed
just walked out after the banquet one
Jimmy Carter left beijing I look through
six or seven papers not a single article
not where the state controls the media
that's never an accident the overall effect is a visit
was to make visitors feel the impossibility
making real contact at one point
I heard from a source close to him the carter was upset enough to consider just
packing up
and going home you know when it comes to
big leader Colt or the Chinese don't
make mistakes what you see is what you get and it usually means something
well and the question is what does it mean this is not to say that China would
not love to have better relations with the US
but on its own terms to compound the standoff
our diplomatic officials in the White House and the State Department
relatively little interesting experience in China
and are distracted by many other urgent problems elsewhere
we have moreover a president possessed a Ruger cool manner himself who has so far
been unable to warm up to his counterpart
Xi Jinping also seemingly a very self-contained
reserved man with an awful Nick Maddox mile
Xi Jinping first thing he did when he came into office
he said I have a dream %uh jungle mom
the Chinese dream not your dream
%uh artery the China dream is an ideal launched by she
that is now emblazoned on billboards bus stops and byways
throughout the country and essentially place to china's historically your name
well power respect global standings
what it does not contain
is any aspiration toward the Western conception and liberal democracy
humanistic values with the chinese seem to be saying
without being too explicit they've always been masters a Mandar action
is that they will now be reckoned with on their own terms not ours
%uh like a turn on this is the world's new reality
%uh 0
on
%uh