U.S. Relations with the People's Republic of China (2006)

U.S. Department of State

APEC Preview

Senior Administration Officials
Foreign Press Center BACKGROUND Briefing
Washington, DC
November 13, 2006

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QUESTION: Thank you. Kaori Lida with NHK Japanese Public Television. If I can follow up on that. Will this APEC FTA be proposed by the United States? And also can you talk a little bit about the significance of the President -- the President going to Vietnam and also about the importance of the PNTR being concluded by that time?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Why don't I take the first question and then you can take the others? I want to be very clear that I don't expect that the President will propose an FTA and the United States is not proposing an FTA for Asia Pacific. In fact, I think there are a number of members of APEC who are identifying the possibility of an APEC-wide Asia Pacific FTA as something worth evaluating. And so I think the discussion will be around what steps would we need to take as members of APEC to understand the viability and the path to consider an Asia Pacific FTA, but not to announce movement on one, but really to lay out the game plan for determining how one might come together.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: In terms of the trip to Vietnam, we really hope with the President's trip this year to open a new chapter in U.S.-Vietnamese relations. I notice Vietnamese official is quoted in the press today as saying this is a new American invasion, and in a sense it is. In a sense, with the WTO opening up Vietnam for more direct foreign investment, you find a lot of American companies terribly eager to go into Vietnam. I notice Intel has just announced a new expansion of their computer chip operations in Vietnam. Many other American companies?

The President will meet with some of those Americans who are coming into Vietnam, some of whom are actually refugees from Vietnam who have returned to do business in Vietnam, some of them who are soldiers from the war era who are now coming back and helping Vietnam build a new Vietnam.

And so I think this is a terribly significant visit. I know the President is very eager to see Vietnam. He's never been there. He's excited to see the changes that are going on in Vietnam, the booming of the economy. Really, Vietnam, in many ways, is a country at takeoff. If you look at it, it is somewhat similar, although not totally the same, as China in the 1980s when it began to really move from a command to a market economy. And so it's an important trip and one that we think can accomplish a lot.

PNTR -- we are very hopeful that the Congress this week will take up the issue. We are hopeful that it will pass in the U.S. Congress in the next few days and the President will have that in his pocket as he visits Vietnam. That's good for American business. That's good for American consumers. It's the right thing to do. As you know, Vietnam has already been granted accession into the WTO by the governing board of the WTO. So if we don't have PNTR, it will simply restrict the activities of American companies without actually stopping the WTO accession of Vietnam, so it's in our interest to move ahead with that.

QUESTION: Thanks. I think the North Korean nuclear issue -- my name is Wada from Japan's Mainichi newspaper. I think North Korea nuclear issue is one of the major problems you have to discuss at the APEC leaders meeting. What is your goal there? Also, President Bush is going to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Abe for the first time since his election to prime ministership. What kind of expectation does the President have for the meeting? Thank you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Well, first of all, you're absolutely right that North Korea will be a subject of discussion, particularly at the bilateral meetings that are held by the President and other leaders at the APEC summit.

One of the things that we like about the APEC summit, the President likes about the APEC summit, is when you get 21 leaders of economies together you get a lot of opportunities for discussion. Clearly we are at a point on the North Korean nuclear issue where we are trying to map out the way ahead to the next round of the six-party talks and in that sense he will have the opportunity to meet with four of the six players in the six-party talks at APEC, discuss what we should try and accomplish when we do begin the next round of the six-party talks.

As the President has said he wants a diplomatic solution to this issue. He wants to work multilaterally. He thinks the six-party process is the way to move this forward and he'll have the chance to discuss it with President Hu, President Putin, President Roh and of course Prime Minister Abe.

In terms of the meeting with Prime Minster Abe, the two have actually met before. They met at Crawford when Prime Minister Abe came with then-Prime Minister Kozumi. So this won't be their first meeting but it will be their first chance to really sit down together, get to know each other a little bit better. We've designed it so they'll have lunch together which is a bit more informal a setting, the ability of the two men to have a chance to really understand each other. Of course the President will be looking forward to hearing what Prime Minister Abe's goals are both domestic and internationally. He'll be very eager to hear about the meetings that Prime Minister Abe held in South Korea and China earlier this fall. And another thing is that the First Ladies will get their first chance to meet each other. And we understand that the First Lady of Japan is a very interesting and accomplished woman and I think the First Lady of the United States is going to enjoy very much her chance to meet with her.

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QUESTION: Thank you. I'm Sharon from the Voice of America. And I read a report that Mr. Bush were going to have a separate meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao and is there any particular economic or business issue on the agenda? Thank you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: As you may know we have inaugurated a new dialogue with the Chinese on economic issues, called the Strategic Economic Dialogue. And Secretary Paulson is in the lead on that dialogue and will be traveling in December to Beijing. I am sure that President Bush and President Hu will discuss our goals for that new dialogue, how we can broaden and deepen our economic relationship, the agenda for that dialogue so I think there will be a detailed discussion of what we hope to achieve on that front.

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QUESTION: Thanks. Betty Lin of the World Journal. This is follow-up on the previous question on meeting with Chinese President Hu. I'd like to know whether, well, since the State Department just released its International Religious Freedom Report. So is the President going to talk to President Hu on that? And also, when President Hu was here in April, the President talk about IPI currency issues. Is he going to push on that? And President Hu is going to meet with President Musharraf later this month and they may sign an agreement on nuclear cooperation. Do you have any comment or expectation on that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: As you probably know, this President has a personal strong interest in the subject of religious freedom worldwide, and every meeting he's had with a Chinese leader since he came into office he has discussed the issue of personal freedom and religious freedom. He puts it in this context, and I think it's important to understand, he believes that it is good for China. It is not so much that the United States is asking China to do something that is being imposed on them, but rather that China and President Hu talk about creating a harmonious society. Harmonious societies, in our view, are societies where people are allowed to express their personal individuality, their personal freedom, the right to gather and worship in a fashion that they wish to. And so I think you can be assured that the President will, once again, raise these issues with President Hu during their meeting. I'm sure the issue, as it has before, the Dalai Lama will come up between the two leaders because of the importance that we have placed on believing that a dialogue needs to be a strong dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama to move toward some resolution of a very longstanding issue.

I'm losing track of the other questions.

QUESTION: IPR.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: And -- there was IPR and -- no, no, no, I'm sorry, there was the second part of the -- currency.

As I said before, we have the strategic economic dialogue beginning in December and certainly all of those kinds of issues will be part of that dialogue. Madame Wu Yi, of course, has led an effort on the Chinese side to move forward on IPR protections. She has, I think, a 14-point plan that she is implementing. We will look forward in December to hearing how that plan is moving forward, how progress is going forward on IPR protections.

Again, I want to stress IPR protection is for the good of the Chinese people as well as the good of the American people and other people because we believe that a society where your intellectual property is protected is a society where you can be as creative as you want to be. And so I think if China is going to move to the next step of economic development, they will find that IPR protection is a critical part of this and I think you already find Chinese companies calling for stronger protection of their own intellectual property rights.

As far as China's relationship with Pakistan is concerned, we have on many occasions spoken very clearly to the Chinese Government about our concerns about proliferation and proliferation by Chinese entities to Pakistan. So if the issue were to come up, I think that would be reiterated.

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QUESTION: Laszlo Trankovits, German Press Agency. There was a briefing last week by the CSIS and Michael Green told us that he thinks that the U.S. missed chances in Southeastern Asian region and the President has reason to repair some damages which were done with bilateral -- some bilateral relations between U.S. and Asian countries. Do you think that there has to be a change in the approach to this region and there is more commitment necessary from the U.S. to this region?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Well, far be it from me to correct Dr. Michael Green of CSIS. I think he may, if he actually said that, it may be an overstatement. If you look at what we have done in this region, our role that we have played in the last 50 years since World War II, you will see that the United States has been a key partner in Southeast Asia. We have $800 billion worth of trade with East Asia. That is not any small involvement in this region. We have defense relationships, very secure, very good relationships with many of the players in this region. This is a region of great interest to the United States, great interest to American companies.

I think the new factor that people have pointed to is that China has a rising interest as well in this region. But I think it's sometimes misunderstood that China's growing role, growing interest in the region, somehow means that there is some zero-sum game here. We really don't see it that way. If you look at trade patterns in the region, you will see that even though there is more intraregional trade, much of that intraregional trade is to serve consumers in the United States and Europe. It's intraregional trade that then comes to the United States in the form of luxury goods and other things that the American consumer wants.

And so our role, I don't think, in this region is diminished. And if you talk to leaders in this region, certainly you don't get the impression that any of them are interested in our leaving the region or diminishing our presence in the region. We're there. We're there to stay. We're a Pacific nation. Just visit California or Washington state and you will very quickly get the idea of how much we are looking to East Asia for our future.

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