As he swings through Asia for the last time as President, Bush can claim to have left a positive legacy on Asia. Having come to office with barely concealed hostility towards China, Bush leaves a fairly stable and cooperative relationship with Beijing.

The US and China now have an expansive engagement that includes a substantive economic dialogue, frequent high level military contact, and political cooperation on a range of Asian and international security challenges.

At the same time, Bush has also strengthened US ties with traditional Asian allies, including Japan, South Korea and Australia, and laid the foundations for a new strategic partnership with India. Bush, however, is unlikely to claim he has resolved the main contradiction in US policy towards China — between the ideological desire to promote political liberalisation in China and the practical imperatives of engaging a great power on the rise.

This is evident in Bush’s decision to ignore domestic pressures to boycott the Beijing Olympics, despite agreeing to meet five well-known Chinese dissidents before his departure for the games, after which he declared that he will “carry the message of freedom as he travels to Beijing.”

Bush also plans to attend a church service in Beijing on Sunday to highlight the US push for greater religious freedom in China. He wants to convince the new generation of Chinese leadership that “religion is not to be feared but welcomed in society”. The Chinese leadership, relieved that Bush has not boycotted the Olympics, is happy to put up with Bush’s beliefs and minor political provocations.

The Dalai Lama

Being seen with the Dalai Lama is an easy way for McCain and Obama to demonstrate their “tough” approach to China. McCain was one up on Obama last month when he organised a photo-op with the Dalai Lama in Denver, after which he asked China to “recognise human rights” in Tibet and pressed it to engage in dialogue with the Tibetan leadership.

Not one to be outdone, Obama dashed off a letter to the Dalai Lama saying much the same things. He said, “American attention to and backing for the people of Tibet is widespread and transcends the divisions of our political contest.”

The Tibetans, however, are well aware of the significant limits to how far Washington can go in pressing China either on democracy in general, or on Tibetan autonomy in particular. After all, almost all recent US presidents sharply criticised China during the campaign, but quickly moderated their tone after the elections.

Different strokes

The few differences between McCain and Obama on China stem from their broader worldviews. Obama, representing the working class constituency, is more critical of China’s trade policies.Labour-leaning intelligentsia in the US tends to support Obama’s position on trade with China. Last month a Washington-based think-tank, the Economic Policy Institute claimed in a report that the growing US trade deficit with China cost 2.3 million American jobs between 2001 and 2007. The pressures from the left are balanced by the corporate sector which immensely values the benefits of free trade with China.

The issues of freedom, however, bring the Hollywood left and the religious right in America together. But they can at best irritate China and do not have the power to undermine the current stability of the Sino-American relationship.

On national security, McCain adopts a sharper tone, demanding that China not be included in a future expansion of the G-8 club of industrialised countries. While McCain might recognise the need to balance the rise of China, Obama prefers the integration of China into the international system to building countervailing alliances.

The writer is a professor at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg