En route to Friday’s state dinner in his honor, Chinese President Xi Jinping stopped off in Seattle to meet with the heads of America’s great technology firms, from which China denies regularly stealing $300 billion annually in intellectual property, according to the Wall Street Journal. His goal: to lobby them to support his effort to persuade the Obama administration “not to retaliate against China for years of hacking and theft of intellectual property.”
The last national leader who lobbied America to support his country’s position on a matter before the Obama administration was Israel’s prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. Xi’s lobbying will not deter Obama from rolling out the red carpet for his Chinese counterpart, and ordering out a 21-gun salute and a dinner lavish enough to persuade Xi that we really do want to please him. In Netanyahu’s case, Obama was sufficiently annoyed with the Israeli’s efforts to lobby Americans for support on issues his guest deemed vital to Israel’s security that he left their meeting for a private family dinner without inviting Netanyahu or even arranging to have pizzas brought in for the prime minister and his delegation.
Xi is building islands, and a missile system with which any rivals’ aircraft carriers can be sunk. Since ours are the only such vessels within reach of the missiles, one would expect the president to take it rather personally, since it is difficult to pivot to Asia when a missile might catch you mid-pivot. Israel is a testing ground for U.S. military technology, would not prepare to defend against a sensible U.S. pivot to the chaotic Middle East, and has not proclaimed its desire to reduce American influence in the region. Yet, America maintains a Strategic Economic Dialogue with China, Obama on his visit to China was effusive in his praise of Xi, while the U.S. State Department hurls obscenities at Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. and unnamed administration officials call Netanyahu “chickenshit” and a “coward”.
Finally, there is the not-so-small question of China’s unadmitted cyberattacks on the U.S. Secretary of State Kerry professes outrage that Israel might have listened in on his negotiations with the Iranians on their nuclear program, although he has no proof that they did; still, he warned Netanyahu not to reveal anything Israel’s spies might have heard. But the Obama administration’s reaction to Chinese cyberspying is, er, tame. It is likely that at week’s end Obama and Xi will announce a joint agreement not to attack each other’s infrastructure – power, banking, communications, and health care systems. But, and there are several big buts, Harvard’s Joe Nye, an advocate of soft rather than hard power, points out that such an agreement is not verifiable, “and what is its value if it can’t be verified”; director of National Intelligence James Clapper says our cyberpolicy lacks “both the substance and psychology of deterrence”; and at this time the proposed agreement does not cover most of the hacking of personnel records or theft of intellectual profit and other cyber-aggression that has already occurred. Nevertheless, Xi has to worry that Obama has said “this is not just a matter of us being mildly upset and … we are prepared to take some countervailing actions.” But not just yet, not until China crosses whatever red line the president has in mind.
The life of a Chinese president is not easy, with growth slowing, state-owned enterprises resisting reform, S&P revising the outlook for its banks to negative – “we view economic risks for China’s banking industry as high” - and no outlet for dissent except demonstrations and riots. The life of an Israeli prime minister should be easier: The economy is growing, the high-tech sector is more spied on than spying, and free elections provide an outlet for dissent. But when it comes to a really good dinner on a visit to Washington, better to be Xi than Bibi.