While Obama has spoken with Chinese leaders in depth about business and trade, human rights issues have not been the main topic of the bilateral dialogue.

Daljit Dhaliwal talks about China’s new role with Jamie Metzl, executive vice president of the Asia Society. He says that China may emerge as a strategic partner.

Secretary of Clinton rounded out the emerging power circuit with a trip to India this week.

The Obama administration has been in overdrive building America’s pivotal power relationships with China, Russia and now India. For reasons Mona Sutphen and I describe in our book, this is the right approach to big powers in the current era. A central rationale is that “strategic collaboration” will focus major power assets on transnational threats, which America cannot successfully battle alone.

A lot of legwork goes into building a working relationship, Obama officials have wasted no time. Presidents Hu and Obama have met twice, and every week seems to find another high level U.S. official in Beijing. Secretary of State Clinton was the first in history to go to China before Europe. Next week, the first Strategic & Economic Dialogue, an intense two-day conference co-chaired by Secretary Clinton and Secretary of Treasury Geitner and their Chinese counterparts, will be held in D.C.

President Obama and presidents Medvedev met and issued a comprehensive joint statement not even three months into his term, after Secretary of State Clinton had already hit the “reset” button with her counterpart.   Next came a full fledged summit in Moscow two weeks ago at which the U.S. and Russia agreed to resume arms control talks and to reinvigorate the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism.

Secretary of Clinton rounded out the emerging power circuit with a trip to India this week. She inaugurated a “strategic dialogue,” with Delhi and blessed deepening civilian nuclear cooperation. But she came away empty handed on climate, as Delhi refused to commit to any binding targets under a new climate treaty.

It’s one thing to build these working relationships. And it is another for them to work. While we’ve realized some important gains from these rising power relationships already, many others are elusive. The coming years will be filled with frustration as our officials invest countless hours consulting and negotiating — yet we don’t get the kind of help we want from China on North Korea or climate, from Russia on Iran, and from India on Pakistan, to name a few. But at least we will increasingly understand their perspectives, and that will lead to either more policy success or more realistic expectations.

- Nina Hachigian

Photo courtesy of Flickr user u.s. department of state under a Creative Commons license.

Climate change was on the agenda this week when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy marks a break with the Bush approach on many counts, but none more visible than energy and climate change. These issues now animate our relationship with China, and not a moment too soon.

Climate is now central to U.S. diplomacy for three reasons:

• The administration rightly views global warming as a serious threat to national security;
• A treaty to succeed Kyoto is to be negotiated at the end of this year in Copenhagen under the auspices of the U.N.;
• Science tells us that time is running out to contain the increase of average global temperatures, avoiding the potentially castastrophic limit of 2°C.

The big enchilada on climate and energy diplomacy is China. China is now the largest yearly emitter of greenhouse gases, having just surpassed the U.S. Together, the U.S. and China account for 40 percent of worldwide emissions. China is the largest coal producer in the world, and coal accounts for 70 percent of China’s energy use. Energy demand in China is growing wildly. From 2001 to 2007, energy demand in China alone grew by the same amount used in all of Latin America put together.

Thus, last August, when the Center for American Progress released a report (which I co-authored) making recommendations about the future of U.S.-China relations, we called for the new president to make climate and energy a central focus of the bilateral relationship. We argued that the urgency of global warming demanded that step, but that elevating an issue on which China and the U.S. had much in common could have other positive spill-over effects. At the time, this was not a run-of-the-mill recommendation. There had been very little positive interaction between the U.S. and China on climate and energy, with both countries in a “suicide pact,” refusing to act until the other got serious.

The administration is now putting a new approach to the test. On her first trip as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton went to Asia and highlighted energy and climate change in Beijing. President Obama brought up global warming with President Hu in their first meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in April. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was in China earlier this week, having made climate change — and not human rights, as many expected — the focus of her trip.

As a result of this diplomatic focus, and the fact that the Obama administration is clearly serious about cleaning up America’s act on energy and climate, the U.S.-China game of chicken over global warming is giving way to a more positive dynamic. Both sides, while still demanding unrealistic progress from the other, are doing a lot themselves, realizing that the more steps they can say they have taken domestically, the more leverage they will have in Copenhagen.

Last week, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, or ACES, sponsored by Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), passed through committee in the House. This legislation would, for the first time, create a cap and trade system in the U.S. Some environmentalists have assailed the legislation because its stated targets — 17 percent under 2005 levels by 2020 — come lower than many would like. But, as my colleagues and I have pointed out, if you measure the full effects of the legislation, the numbers actually look a lot better. In fact, in contrast to what The New York Times reported (and then retracted) about our piece, we think the ACES, if it passes before December — in combination with other environmental measures the administration is taking, like imposing strict mileage standards on cars — will give President Obama the leverage he needs with China, and with others, to make the Copenhagen treaty the best it can be.

- Nina Hachigian

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Speaker Pelosi under a Creative Commons license.

Press coverage of the G-20 Summit in London.

Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner, the former deputy foreign editor of the Washington Post, discusses what really came out of the G-20 meeting (besides the $1.1 trillion pledged), including Fidel Castro’s positive outlook on U.S.-China relations.

You’d be hard-pressed to figure out — in terms of old-fashioned greenbacks — what exactly came out of the G-20 meeting in London this week. But perhaps warm, fuzzy feelings are all we need.

The stock markets were sharply up at the end of the week, so maybe appearances — and promises — are reality.

Does anybody really know how much money is needed to attack the world recession, and how much of the money pledged by G-20 nations was already en route?

The consensus is that the G-20 leaders pledged $1.1 trillion in total funds. But President Obama said, “Nearly all G-20 nations have acted to stimulate demand, which will total well over $2 trillion in global fiscal expansion.”

And meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also indicated that there’s an escalation clause somewhere, and that the stimulus based on the G-20 agreement will add up to $5 trillion by the end of next year.

No matter the fine print, it sounded good to many.

Jeremy Warner, writing Friday in The Independent, said that “it’s easy to be cynical, but the summit has also achieved something genuinely impressive…For the first time in a long time, there’s reason for optimism.”

Nobel Prize winning economist and columnist Paul Krugman, who has criticized the Obama administration for not pumping enough into the stimulus, is still pessimistic, but wrote that he saw “glimmers of good news — the G-20 summit accomplished more than I thought it would.”

He was writing about that in the context of concern about the Chinese government, which he says “hasn’t yet faced up to the wrenching changes that will be needed to deal with this global crisis.”

And speaking about China, that late entry in the news analysis game, Fidel Castro, also had an optimistic take on the G-20 Summit.

“The experts on economic issues have made a tremendous effort,” Castro wrote on Friday in his occasional column, “Reflections of Fidel,” in Granma, the official Cuban government newspaper.

Castro singled out special praise for Obama and for Chinese President Hu Jintao, who plan to meet soon to discuss a broad range of issues. That he said, may be “one of the most important news items in relation to the G-20 Summit.”

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Soitu.es under a Creative Commons license.

Chris Sabatini, the senior director of policy at the Council of the Americas, discusses China’s interests in the Americas and what impact this could have on the U.S.

AUDIO: Edward Wong of The New York Times reports from Beijing about the impact of land reform on China.

Land in the city of Changshu in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province.

On Sunday, the Communist Party of China passed laws allowing peasants to trade and rent land, though they remain unable to buy or sell it.

Leaders were expected to pass a program that would enable peasants to purchase and sell land, but the issues of purchase and sale have disappeared from public discourse despite earlier coverage. Rumors of disagreement within the Communist Party are circulating.

Some communists argue that “privatization” reforms undercut the party and ultimately strengthen Western capitalism in a country already straddling communist and capitalist systems.

Advocates suggest that the reforms would improve food security and relieve rural poverty.

The “Poligazette” blog writes that new freedoms for China’s villagers are a step in the right direction for the oppressive country.

The “Sinomania” blog writes that reforms are monumental and will “open the door to finally giving rural Chinese what they’ve long[ed] for for centuries — their own piece of China.”

The “China Aid” blog writes about the decision of Hu Jintao — Communist Party general secretary and president of the People’s Republic of China — to support the land reforms despite enormous risk, and argues that the Communist Party is digging its own grave.

China Economic Review’s “Editor’s Journal” writes about the promise of the reforms and their potential effects on the agriculture industry.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user iansand under a Creative Commons license.