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.
