US, China launching strategic dialogue in Beijing

It may have come to be; the uni-polar moment is over in both fact and philosophy. The sense I've gotten this morning after reading through my usual Google news searches is that the US is trying very hard to do proper business with Russia and China in all gobal affairs where twains meet. The below story sums it up but there are others as well. Russia is pressuring the Iranians to stay at the table with the EU; China has drafted a de-nuclear roadmap for N. Korea, which calls for normalization between the US and N. Korea as well as Japan and N. Korea. This plan is being backed by the Russians as well, so long as the N. Koreans rejoin the IAEA. I still believe there are many in Washington that are committed to fighting the "Ruskies aka Commies" until their last dying breath, which is fine because those people will probably not live too much longer as they made their bones in the Cold War.

Is war with either Russia or China possible no matter how much dialogue and diplomacy is employed? Sure, all things possible. But war has to come from the very last resort where either diplomacy has completely gone down in flames or there are actual missiles headed toward NY and Moscow is in flames (20 points if you know what movie I stole that from). What the below story as well as the others cited tells me is that the uni-polar moment has passed. We are sharing the stage with Russia and China, more so China. Like all things, we adapt and evolve or we stay stagnant and get passed over by the better creatures.

Here's the story:

Top diplomatic officials from the United States and China kicked off annual series of strategic dialogues today in Beijing, in an endeavor by the two major countries to iron out their trade and military differences.

Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick met with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo in talks meant to "facilitate bilateral relations," the Xinhua News Agency said.

Mr. Zoellick met Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday for more than 90 minutes of talks ahead of the two-day strategic dialogue.

While Beijing and Washington cooperate in many fields on the world stage, including the ongoing six-party talks in Beijing to try to defuse the North Korean nuclear crisis, relationship has been strained in recent months amid U.S. worries about China's military buildup and the proposed takeover of the oil company Unocal Corp. by the Chinese oil major CNOOC, the Associated Press reported.

U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed to open a strategic dialogue with meetings twice a year at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Chile last year, the China Daily has learned.

The bilateral talks are the first in what is meant to be a regular series of high-level contacts, with Beijing and Washington taking turns as hosts. China refers to the meetings as a "strategic dialogue," while the United States calls them a "senior dialogue."

Mr. Zoellick, who attended a regional security conference in Vientiane, Laos, last week, said in weekend a stopover in Hong Kong that he would discuss foreign policy and economics with senior Chinese officials during his Beijing visit.

"I hope we'll enable the U.S. and China to get a better sense of where there are points of mutuality, which I believe to be many, to work co-operatively, and also where we have differences how best to manage them," the Associated Press quoted him as saying then.

Speaking to reporters in Hong Kong Saturday, Mr. Zoellick said he would try to focus during the dialogue on the bigger picture of the relationship.

"We'll try to step back from the individual items on the agenda and see how we can integrate the topics," according to a transcript of his comments on a State Department information Web site, usinfo.state.gov.

Concerning economic cooperation, Mr. Zoellick is expected to confer with senior officials of China's National Development and Reform Commission, a super-ministry in charge of coordinating economic policy and guiding investment and energy policy, Reuters reported.

Earlier this month, China helped ease frictions between the two powers by decoupling its currency, the yuan, from the U.S. dollar.

The Bush administration had been pressing Beijing to revalue the yuan, formerly pegged at about 8.28 to the dollar, arguing that the peg system was giving Chinese exporters huge trade advantages.

China now sets the yuan's value in reference to a basket of major world currencies, and it is now worth about 8.1 to the dollar.

The Associated Press quoted some news reports as saying that China¡¯s central bank had briefed American officials in advance of its plan to drop yuan's link to the dollar two weeks ago, which was believed as an indication of an attempt by Beijing to solicit support from Washington.

U.S. legislators have been worried about a bid by CNOOC for California-based Unocal Corp, which they claim presents risks to American security.

Meanwhile, a growing list of American giant corporations have acquired major assets in China. In June, the Bank of America (BoA) bought a 9 per cent stake of the China¡¯s Construction Bank, with a bill of US$3 billion, making the US bank the largest single foreign investor in China's banking sector so far.