By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

Just who was calling the shots at the June 7-8 summit between ChiCom President Xi Jinping and his “U.S. counterpart” Barack Obama at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, California?

Obamabi

According to the Communist Party of China website, Xi made several proposals, to which Obama “responded actively,” and that the U.S. is willing to “construct a new state-to-state cooperation modal with China.”

The Chinese shopping list included:

The two sides need to elevate the level of dialogue and mutual trust and institutionalize the meetings between leaders of the two nations at multilateral venues such as the Group of 20 and the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, while making good use of the existing over 90 dialogue and communication mechanisms between the two governments.

To open a new horizon for pragmatic cooperation, Washington should take active steps to relax restrictions on hi-tech exports to China and promote the bilateral trade and investment structures toward a more balanced future.

Thirdly, to create a new mode of interaction between major countries, the two sides need to maintain close coordination and collaboration on the Korean Peninsula, Afghanistan and other global hotspot issues, and work more closely on issues such as crackdown on piracy and transnational crimes, peacekeeping tasks, disaster relief, cyber security, climate change and space security.

The two sides need to find a new way to manage their difference and actively foster a new type of military relations in accordance with the new type of inter-power ties.

Clearly China finds it onerous having to steal U.S. technology and now wants it handed to them on a plate.

Scary too is the “institutionalizing” of leadership dialog, at international fora. Ideally U.S. leaders should be keeping the ChiCom gangsters at arm’s length. This is a bit like the FBI holding “institutionalized” meetings with the mob.

What can a “new type of military relations” mean? This can only be to the gain of the Chinese. The Western Alliance has little to gain by military co-operation with a its most likely adversary in the next major war. Such cooperation won’t make war less likely, only give the Chinese and their Russian allies a better chance of winning it.

What’s the bet Obama gives the ChiComs most of what they want?