Watching the five-day visit to the United States by China’s vice-president Xi Jinping, slated to be his country’s top leader later this year, and America’s reaction to him has been a fascinating experience. At the end of it, Mr Xi — who came through the sojourn with flying colours, delighting both his interlocutors and the people in general with his easygoing and informal manner and familiarity with the host country — declared his journey to be a “full success”. Many, if not most, US commentators, broadly agree with him. Some say, however, that the “great story” of his success is that “there is no story in it”.

This is a shrewd assessment of a highly complex situation. Mr Xi hadn’t come to Washington — from where he travelled to Iowa, essentially to meet the family with whom he had stayed in 1985 as a lowly Chinese functionary, and to Los Angeles — to discuss and solve the problems that the world’s two biggest economies and military powers have with each other. As the putative President of China and general-secretary of its Communist Party, his main purpose was to introduce himself to the rulers and people of the US and get a feel of their mood.
For their part, given the great inter-dependence of the two countries, the Americans were equally keen to get a measure of the man who, if he does become what almost everyone believes he would, will rule the second most powerful country in the world for 10 years. No wonder he was shown every courtesy. His official host, US vice-president Joe Biden travelled to Los Angeles to be by his side.
However, one major difficulty was that the visit was taking place at an awkward time. For, thanks to overblown rhetoric during a bitter election campaign attacks on China across America have been escalated. But there was nothing anyone could have done about it.
Yet, there is something to be said about the American society and system which ensured that nothing untoward happened throughout Mr Xi’s stay, and he was treated with respect. Some Tibetans did demonstrate a distance away from the White House when the Chinese vice-president was talking to President Barack Obama inside. For the rest, no demonstrator or dissident was seen anywhere near the honoured visitor.
Even the redoubtable Mitt Romney, still considered the front-runner in the race for Republican nomination for presidency, waited for Mr Xi to leave American shores before declaring in a newspaper article: “Unless China changes its ways, on Day One of my presidency I will designate it a currency manipulator and take appropriate counteraction. A trade war with China is the last thing I want, but I cannot tolerate our current trade surrender.”
Despite this partisan statement the fact remains that President Obama privately and Mr Biden and the US secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, publicly — during a toast at a luncheon in Mr Xi’s honour — raised all US concerns, including Chinese trade practices, currency undervaluation, copyright infringement and human rights record. On this occasion, as on two others, Mr Xi’s courteous answer was that China had “reduced” its overall trade surplus and “allowed” its currency to appreciate. He also noted that many US states were now exporting to China much more than before. On human rights, he said, things were better though “better wasn’t the best”; there was “room for improvement”.
“There is a view,” he went on to say, “that the United States is the loser in bilateral economic and trade operations and China is a winner. So far, both China and the US are winners, and our cooperation is a win-win situation.” He also took the opportunity to tell the US to lift restrictions on the export of high technology to China.
While appreciating Mr Xi’s sincerity, Mr Biden did brief the media privately that he doubted if China’s new leader would be responsive to what “we want or to most things we want”. What else he said was revealing. According to him, Mr Xi was “very frank about the economic and political dilemmas he faced in China” and equally candid about “our disagreements”.
Most interestingly, Mr Biden disclosed that wanting to learn “everything he could about the US system”, Mr Xi discussed individual members of Congress”, many of them China’s critics, and explored the “motivations behind some legislators’ actions”.
With the people wherever he went Mr Xi was a big hit. His pleasant personality and informal style have drawn comparison, both in America and back home in China, to Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 visit during which China’s “paramount leader” had famously donned a
10-gallon cowboy hat to the delight of his audience. Since Mr Xi’s arrival coincided with the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s visit to China, he made it a point to use an ancient Chinese proverb: “When you drink water, remember those who dug the well.”
Coverage of the Xi visit and its outcome seemed carefully calibrated. This is not to suggest that criticism of China was avoided. Several Chinese dissidents living in the US and others denounced the Chinese regime. At the same time Mr Xi was given a big build-up and several articles had one theme: “Defuse the distrust with Beijing.”
Among the business deals concluded just before Mr Xi’s departure the most important was the one allowing Hollywood’s Dream Works Animation to set up shop in China. To this there were contradictory reactions that just about summed up the complexities of the US-China relationship.
Critics said that the Chinese would insist on transference of animation technology, which must not be permitted until China lifted its “illegal” restrictions on the import of Hollywood films. They were reminded that China’s “quantitative restrictions” on these imports were approved when it was admitted to the WTO. Commented a China expert: “The US-China relationship is a vast magnetic field, abounding in attractions as well as repulsions.”