CHINA / Foreign Media on China
Brookings to launch China policy centre
(FT)
Updated: 2006-10-09 08:33
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/74c1a120-571f-11db-9110-0000779e2340.html
The Brookings Institution, one of the US��s oldest think-tanks, will this
week launch a China policy centre in Washington and Beijing.
It will be funded by John Thornton, former chairman of Goldman Sachs who
quit the investment bank in 2003 to teach at Tsinghua University in
Beijing. He has committed $2.5m (��m, ��1.3m) a year for the next five
years.
Brookings says the initiative - the first time it has launched a centre
devoted to one country and its first centre outside the US - is aimed at
improving the US's understanding of what is seen as the world's foremost
emerging power.
"China's rise is the most important geopolitical event of our lifetime,"
said Mr Thornton during an interview.
"American policymakers need to acquire a much more sophisticated
understanding of what is happening in China domestically and why - a
grasp that is often lacking in Washington."
Strobe Talbott - the head of Brookings, who was deputy secretary of state
during the Clinton administration - said that it would scrutinise
China��s growing diplomatic, economic and military power and analyse
questions such as the impact of China on global warming.
"It is clear we are living in a post-Kyoto [the climate change agreement]
world," said Mr Talbott.
"One of the most pressing questions is how and whether China will become
part of the solution to the crunch between its energy needs and global
warming. What we need is a Shanghai protocol on climate change."
Mr Talbott said the other two pressing questions about China were how it
would manage its political system as it opened up to the world, and what
impact China's rise would have on international institutions such as the
United Nations and the World Trade Organisation.
Brookings is also planning a centre dedicated to India, the world's other
emerging economic superpower.
"The triangular relationship between the US, China and India will shape
the world in the coming decades," Mr Talbott said.
He said the evolution in the Bush administration's stance - from branding
China a "strategic competitor" in 2001, to calling on it to become a
"responsible stakeholder" - was positive.
"China talks of its own 'peaceful rise'," he said. "It is important
America engages with China in a way that assists that process."
But the US should be wary of exaggerating China's military clout and
painting it into a corner on other disputes, such as its currency
overvaluation and growing trade surplus with the US, he said.
Mr Thornton said the approach of Hank Paulson, the US treasury secretary
and a former colleague of his at Goldman Sachs, who visited China last
month, set a benchmark for how US officials should interact with their
Chinese counterparts.
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