U.S. and Hong Kong (2005)

U.S. Department of State

The President's Upcoming Trip to Asia

Senior Administration Official
Foreign Press Center BACKGROUND Briefing
Washington, DC
November 10, 2005

4:15 P.M. EST

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

MR. BAILY: Welcome to this afternoon's Foreign Press Center briefing that will be discussing the President's upcoming trip to Asia, beginning next week. I would remind you all that this is a briefing on background to a Senior Administration Official, so with that I'll turn it over to the Senior Administration Official who will make a few comments and then be happy to take your questions for about a half of hour. Thank you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you. Sorry I'm late. We were doing the briefing over at the White House and it ran a little long. You know how journalists are, they ask a lot of questions and it just took a little longer. Sorry to be late.

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The main themes for APEC, and there are always many, many important objectives and action items for APEC each year. Some of the main themes this year include building momentum for a good meeting of the WTO in Hong Kong in the Doha development round, coming up with a set of cooperative mechanisms to deal with the frightening possibility of a pandemic, an avian influenza pandemic, energy, looking at liberalization in the region. How to move towards the Bogor goals of full liberalization of trade in Asia; a number of security-related issues, how to strengthen export controls, how to work better on detecting radiological devices and materials. The general philosophy is that as APEC lowers the barriers to trade, we want to make sure, all of us, that it doesn't also lower the barriers for proliferation or terrorism. And so some of the agenda, they've had focuses on those areas and we have good cooperation on some good initiatives.

After APEC, which is the 18th and 19th, the President will fly to Beijing. He will meet with President Hu and with Premier Wen Jiabao. They'll have meetings and meals together. We have a very robust and full agenda with China. President Hu was just in New York in September and he will come back to the United States sometime in the first part of next year because his visit to Washington was delayed because of Hurricane Katrina. So this is an ongoing discussion on a number of fronts between President Hu and President Bush.

The President will talk about currency. China made an important move in July setting up a framework for a market-based flexible currency. That's a good move for China. It's a good move for the U.S. It's a good move for the world. Our view is we need more such moves.

President Hu made an important statement publicly about intellectual property rights in New York, and the President wants to talk about how to follow up on strengthening IPR protection, which is good for American workers. It's important for China, too, if it wants its own inventors and innovators to have intellectual property protection.

The President will talk about North Korea and how to make progress on our mutual goal of complete denuclearization, the end of all of North Korea's nuclear weapons and nuclear programs.

The President always talks with President Hu about human rights and religious freedom. The President just saw the Dalai Lama. He'll talk about Tibet.

And so these are all issues that are on the agenda. The overall approach the President takes in discussing these with President Hu is that China and President Hu have articulated a vision of peaceful development and the President's view is that it's in the interest of the United States and the world that China succeed in that vision and have a prosperous society and play a positive role in the world. And his view is that many of these issues he raises, whether it's intellectual property rights or religious freedom, are things that will help China be more successful and ultimately be in China's long-term interests as well.

Finally, the President will travel on the 21st to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Vice President Henry Wallace visited Mongolia in 1944. We've had the Secretary of Defense visit, but this is the first visit by a sitting President of the United States to Mongolia. And the President and the First Lady are really looking forward to it. It will be a little bit cold, but we are confident that the people of Mongolia will be very warm in welcoming him.

Mongolia, per capita, has the third largest contingent in Iraq, if you consider the size of the population and the number of people they've sent. And like many countries that have recently made the transition to democracy, the people of Mongolia have proven themselves to be committed to help other countries, like Iraq, make that transition successfully.

The Mongolian people have made important strides in building a mature, democratic, market-oriented state. There's more work to be done. The President wants to meet with the president and prime minister and encourage that movement and get a feeling for what life is like in Mongolia. He'll visit some Mongolian families and some gher and see what life is like. And he's very much looking forward to it.

And then he will come back to Washington. He'll make one major speech in Kyoto on the first full day and he'll make a major speech at the end in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. And the speech in Kyoto will outline the President's vision, which is an optimistic vision for Asia's future, and describe how some of the issues in his own thinking about freedom, whether it's freedom of intellectual property protection or freedom of speech, will complement and add successful movement to Asia's own forward progress.

And we indeed have good relations across Asia. I think you could say that every country in the region, just about, wants improved relations with the U.S. and we think the President has a message that will resonate and that will help Asia continue on a movement towards the 21st century, one built on economic prosperity and cooperation and one moving away from the more difficult past that this region has often had.

I'm happy to take questions.

MR. BAILY: If I could remind people to speak their name and organization and if anybody in New York who are just joining us from the DVC has a question, they can move on camera.

In the third row there.

QUESTION: This is Vincent Chang with the United Daily News, Taiwan. In the September New York meeting, President Hu made an offer to President Bush, you know, about -- to invite the United States to join China to safeguard the peace and stability in the Strait. Does the United States ever take it seriously? And will the President in any way respond to that offer during this visit?

And my second question is that, two days ago, President Bush was interviewed by several media and he said that he was heartened by our recent dialogues across the Straits. And that as far as I know, there's no official dialogue between the Straits. What were the dialogues that the President referred to?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you for your question, Vincent. It is certainly true that the President wants peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits. That's an objective and one hopes it's an objective that all parties in the region share. The President's view of this issue is that the key is consistency and the President has been consistent in every discussion he's had with President Chen or President Hu about this. He's made it clear we have a one China policy based on the three communiqués, that we oppose unilateral changes to the status quo by any side. We do not support Taiwan independence. And as he said in his interview, we are strong in our commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act.

The President said also that we want to see dialogue and that the beginning dialogue was good. And indeed it is. The point here is made, in the past, to President Hu is that to be truly fruitful, dialogue across the Straits has to be with a dually elected government in Taiwan. So the beginning of dialogues is a good thing but to have a fruitful, productive dialogue, it's going to have to be, ultimately, with the dually elected government in Taipei.

MR. BAILY: If we could go to New York, please.

QUESTION: This is Siu-Wai Cheung with Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao newspaper. You touched upon the two-front prong -- one is the economic side, the other is the political side. I would like to ask you for some comment on the President's agenda for his meeting with the President Hu and Premier Wen on the strategic side. Secretary Rumsfeld just visited China and has some fruitful talks with Chinese counterparts. What was the pertinence of his trip, talks about the bilateral military exchanges and what expectations you have on this trip? Thank you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you. Good question. From the beginning of his administration, President Bush has believed that the key to strengthening U.S.-China relations is to have a cooperative and a constructive and a candid dialogue with his counterparts. And it's in that spirit that President talks to his counterparts about all aspects of China's role in the world.

The President was, I think, impressed with President Hu explained to him in New York some of his thinking about peaceful development. President Hu talked about the many challenges he has as leader of China, improving the lives of his people and the President was sincerely impressed with that goal. This notion of peaceful development is premised on the peaceful external environment and that's something we certainly would like to see as well. And it's in that spirit that the President or other senior U.S. officials have asked Chinese counterparts for more clarity and more transparency about the military buildup, for a better dialogue about what role China plays in other parts of the world.

China is increasingly, because of its economic weight and its presence on the Security Council, a key player in challenges that the international community faces around the world, whether it's Darfur in the Sudan or Nepal or Zimbabwe, when there are challenges, China has a role to play and our view is we should have a dialogue with China that's strategic about what that role should be because many people question, for example, why the leader of Zimbabwe or other leaders who are not moving in the direction the international community is calling for, have such access to Beijing.

And so China clearly has impact. China clearly has connections. China clearly has influence. And it's our view that we should have a frank dialogue about what that influence and impact should be used for and if it's based on this important notion of peaceful development, then it can be a force for good in the world. But this is increasingly an agenda item that the President talks about.

We've inaugurated, under Deputy Secretary Zoellick a dialogue with his counterpart, Vice Minister Dai Bingguo to spend a full amount of time, one, two, three days addressing these various global issues to see if the U.S. and China can use our influence to have a result that works for the international community. I think on the whole, we're optimistic about this, but it's a new aspect of U.S.-China relations that increasingly takes our attention and I think the world expects us to focus on it together with our Chinese colleagues.

QUESTION: Thank you very much. Hiro Akita from Nikkei Newspaper, Japan. When the President was interviewed by the Asian media a few days ago, the President expressed concern about the worsening relations between Japan-China and Japan-Korea. And he said that he would like to play some role, if he could. And my question is specifically speaking, how does President role address this kind of concern on this issue when he meet Prime Minister Koizumi and also Chinese and Korean leaders?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: First thing I should say is that the President and for that matter, the United States, is not about to broker an issue as sensitive as this. But the President said some important things in his interview a few days ago and he was asked this question by a number of journalists from all three countries and he said some important things. He said he thinks it's important to talk about the future. There are many, many areas from avian influenza to energy to the six-party talks where the major powers of Northeast Asia have common interests and imperative to work together. He talked about America's own past and own history with Japan and his own experiences -- his father, of course, as he's pointed out, was fighting Japanese pilots six decades ago and he said, he might -- he could help to explain some of how -- the United States has dealt with this issue. He encouraged dialogue among the leaders, all of whom are his friends, on this issue.

But on the whole, I think, his thinking is that this is an important. He knows it's a sensitive issue in the region. He has some optimism and he explained this because trade and investment and people to people contact across Asia is intensifying and deepening so much and he hopes that he can encourage a full dialogue on this and encourage people to think about all of the important work that we have to do together to take advantage of things like APEC or the six-party talks to deal with all of these challenges Asia has and keep this region moving on a positive trajectory.

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MR. BAILY: Let's go to Germany here in the front row.

QUESTION: Michael Backfisch, German News Business Daily Handelsblatt.

For months, the Administration has asked the Chinese Government to provide for a level playing field on trade and to further liberalize its currency, so far with limited success. According to today's figures, sir, there was a new record trade deficit in September. Do you think that the Administration strategy of soft pressure will finally yield success and what do you make of the latest recommendation of the congressional commission that the U.S. should make more use of its economic and military leverage?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The President was once asked a question like this about whether U.S.-China economic relations are good, and he said: If you're a soybean farmer, you think they're very good; if you work in Seattle for Boeing, you think they're very good. China's just agreed to buy 60 of the new Dreamliners. So the U.S.-China economic relationship benefits a huge number of Americans and Europeans and, of course, Chinese.

So to sustain its own economic development, China has an interest in working on this. But it's a systemic thing that's going to take, you know, stages and stages of work. The currency is another one that's important to us. China has made two small moves. In terms of breaking precedent they were important, but more needs to be done and, as with IPR, it's in China's interest to do that. A more flexible, market-oriented exchange rate will give Chinese policy makers macroeconomic tools so that they can deal with a lot of the economic challenges they'll have as the economy keeps booming along.

So I think that we've had progress and we'll keep having progress because these are in China's economic interests and the Chinese people's interests too. A lot of these have political contexts in China. The Chinese leadership is trying to deal with imbalances that are growing between the coast and the inner provinces because of rapid economic growth. So there's a political context in China that makes it challenging, but the interests of China are served by these kinds of things. And what the President does in these meetings is encourage President Hu to keep going, keep moving. This is good for the U.S. It's good for China. Do we need more? Yes. Are we going to make progress? I think so.

The commission has made recommendations -- there are two commissions on China in the Congress and I have to be honest, I haven't read the entire reports and I'm not sure which one it is. There is the one commission that has recommended the U.S. use its "economic leverage" to -- you know, this is a very comprehensive relationship. I will try not to say complex because in China it's fù zá, which is -- also in Japanese, the context sounds troublesome. It's not troublesome. It's complicated. It's multi-dimensional.

You have to, in order to strengthen U.S.-China relations, make progress on all fronts. It's why the President believes in having a candid dialogue, whether it's human rights, trade, the North Korea issue, China's global role or security issues. It is not -- neither China nor the U.S. can afford to put the entire relationship on hold for any single issue. We need to keep pushing on all fronts and we do and it's in the constructive sphere I described earlier that the President thinks China can play a positive role on the world, that China's prosperity is going to be good for the world, that China needs to define its role and address some of these issues for the good of world but also for its own people to keep benefiting and moving forward.

QUESTION: Satoshi Ukai of the Asahi Shimbun, Japanese newspaper. In countries in the region we have the first East Asian Summit at the end of this year and China describes Administration's view towards this issue and is the President going to bring this up during his visit?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah, the East Asia Summit is holding its first summit in December, I guess. The view that we have is that Asia doesn't have enough institutions to build cooperation and solve issues. That's one reason why we, together with Japan and other countries, pushed hard to create the six-party talks, to create a multilateral forum to address the nuclear issue, but also a forum that could have a long-term positive impact for regional cooperation in Northeast Asia. It's one of the reasons why in response to the tsunami we worked with Japan and India and Australia to very quickly form the regional core groups so we could deliver help quickly. It's why we formed this clean energy alliance with China, India and Japan, Korea and Australia. You know, Asia needs more multilateral cooperation and we have done a lot to try to do that. But our focus has always been on making these multilateral groupings work -- to do real work to tackle problems that the region faces. It's why APEC is so important because APEC has a very detailed agenda to address all of these issues from avian influenza to trade liberalization to energy.

The East Asia Summit is new. It's not clear exactly what the agenda is. It's probably a good thing that the leaders of the region can talk together. For our part, we think APEC is by far the most robust, multilateral grouping in Asia and that's where our focus is. We have a lot of friends in the East Asia Summit. There's a whole different range of countries in that grouping from India to Vietnam to China to Australia to Japan. And we hope that the agenda, if there is one -- or the discussion if there is one, follows up on the agenda that APEC, that the WTO, that these other international organizations have to make progress on trade and other issues. But it's very new so we're interested in seeing how it unfolds.

MR. BAILY: Okay, let's go here, quickly, and then --

QUESTION: Another regional grouping -- Andrei Sitov from TASS, I'm sorry -- one of the regional groupings, a new one, is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. I would like to ask you to comment on this organization and the attitude of the Administration to it.

Also, next year, military exercises are planned in Mongolia. I understand about a thousand U.S. troops had to take part. Why do you think it's needed? Thank you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: On the second one, Mongolia is a nation of about two million people. It's not a large nation in terms of people, it's a large nation in size. Mongolia is taking on as a new democracy a lot of important international roles and responsibilities in Afghanistan, in Iraq. Mongolia's military is a good military. They're good fighters. In fact, one of the greatest heroes so far in Iraq is a Mongolian Sergeant who stopped a suicide bomber with a very accurate shot from his automatic rifle and saved the lives of many, many soldiers and civilians.

So Mongolian fighters are very, very good and they have a very long and proud traditional as many people in Russia and China and -- (laughter) -- Korea -- not Japan -- (laughter) -- no -- but the military is taking on all these new international obligations, which is a great thing for new democracy and our Pentagon wants to help them develop better capacity, logistics, and command and control so they can take on these missions and really do a good job.

On the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you know, the big question for us is, we get the Shanghai part -- it was formed in Shanghai -- and we get the organization part -- it's an organization -- the cooperation part isn't entirely clear to us yet. What is this group cooperating to do? Is it to fight terrorism? Well, that's something we support. Is it to strengthen stability and confidence building? That's something we support. So we're watching this grouping with interest and if the agenda is one that does these things, it's not a problem. Every once in awhile, we hear utterances from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that sound exclusive or aimed externally and the rule is have those kind of blocs in the past. We had them in the Cold War, we had them before World War II, we don't really need those. We need open, inclusive groupings that are moving forward a global agenda for good governance, for free trade, for confidence building. So it's another one, we'll see. We have friends who are in that organization as well and it's something that we want to keep up in our dialogue.

MR. BAILY: Go to the third row here.

QUESTION: Hi, Betty Lin of the World Journal. You mentioned that -- and the President addressed the Tibetan issue with President Hu and how is he going to raise it? And since that Dalai Lama mentioned to him that he's not seeking independence and I don't know whether -- how is the President going to address the Tibetan issue?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The President has raised this before and so have other senior U.S. officials with our Chinese colleagues. There is a dialogue between the Dalai Lama's representatives and Beijing, which is a good thing. What we'd like to see is an opportunity for the Dalai Lama to go China and to talk about how to help preserve the unique cultural and historical and religious dimensions of Tibet's very, very respected culture and society. And the Dalai Lama is not about independence. He's about preserving a religion and a culture and traditions that are respected very, very widely around the world. And ultimately, it would be in China's interests to show progress on this before the Olympics when, you know, the entire world is focused on China because what the Dalai Lama represents is something very important to people around the world, including, of course, Mongolia, where there are more followers of the Dalai Lama than any other religion.

So it's important to a lot of places around the world. But there's a dialogue and that's good but it's time to start -- I'm seeing some results and a good step would be for the Dalai Lama to be able to go to China and talk about these things directly himself.

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MR. BAILY: I'm afraid this will have to be the last question. We'll go to Italy.

QUESTION: Giampiero Gramaglia, Italian News Agency, ANSA. You said that the APEC meeting will focus on trade issues and the Doha round. Are you looking for a message from the meeting to the European countries and to soften that position?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, going back to what I said earlier about not forming blocs, we're not interested in making APEC a bloc that takes on or exacerbates or somehow highlights the actions from other parts of the world. What we want do to is make progress on trade liberalization and in the APEC context we do that by talking about bilateral arrangements. There's a huge expansion of bilateral free trade agreements, regional trade agreements, we're negotiating with Thailand right now, we've completed them with Australia and with Singapore, for example, we're looking at some new countries in Asia we can do bilateral agreements and many Asian countries are doing it -- regional agreements. In the APEC context, one of the things that our senior officials and leaders talk about is how to avoid a "spaghetti bowl" of these arrangements that make it difficult for business because they have so many different rules -- so bilateral arrangements.

And then how to talk about regional free trade and APEC has articulated goals for liberalization of developed countries by 2010, developing by 2020. We don't have much time left and we want to come as close to that as possible on a regional basis, probably building off of these bilateral and regional agreements.

And very, very important to all the countries in Asia, these are all free trade countries that we have a successful Doha round and a good meeting in Hong Kong, which is only about a month after APEC. So it's not about sending signals so much as building momentum on free trade on the bilateral, regional and global dimensions.

Thank you very much.

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