China a "great challenge": US presidential candidate Giuliani
AMES, United States (AFP) — US 2008 Republican front-runner Rudolph Giuliani on Thursday warned that emerging China was a "great challenge" to the United States, and backed continued engagement with Beijing.
But the former New York mayor also called for an increase in US military strength to deter China from ever mounting a security challenge to America, and said he would push Beijing faster on introducing political freedoms.
"China is a great challenge to the United States, and maybe one of the most important challenges," Giuliani told an audience of mainly students at Iowa State University.
"We will be the two great economies in the world. The more we make sure China's rise is peaceful, the better it is going to help the United States," Giuliani said in response to a question from a Chinese student.
"We should remain substantially engaged with China."
Giuliani's comments marked one of his first significant discussions of China policy during his campaign, and signalled he would continue the engagement strategy favored by recent US administrations if elected president.
It was also one of the few occasions that China has come up in the 2008 race other than in denunciations of alleged currency manipulation by Beijing, the threat to US jobs from the Chinese economy or defective consumer goods.
Though he pushed for continued engagement with Beijing, Giuliani, who leads national Republican polls just over 60 days before the first party nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, said he was concerned with the lack of political freedoms in China, and with its potential security threat.
"To make sure that China doesn't think of challenging us militarily, we should increase the size of our military," Giuliani said.
"Our military is too small to deal with the Islamic terrorist situation, but it really is too small to deter would-be aggressors from ever thinking about challenging us."
Other leading candidates have discussed China policy mostly in the context of festering disagreements between Washington and Beijing.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in August warned that the United States must deal with "currency manipulation" at a forum hosted by a major US labor union.
And she hit out at the standard of Chinese imports after a wave of consumer and food scares linked to Chinese goods.
"I don't want to eat bad food from China or have my children having toys that are going to get them sick," said Clinton.
But Clinton also wrote in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs journal that the Sino-US relationship would be "the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century" and called for "cooperatitve" ties with Beijing.
Senator Barack Obama, second to Clinton in national polls branded China at the same event as a "competitor" but not necessarily an enemy.
"If they're manipulating their currency ... we take them to the mat," he said.
Another leading Democratic candidate, John Edwards, has warned that with the US preoccupation with other global hotspots like Iraq, Iran and North Korea, China has not had enough attention from US policymakers in recent years.
Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, also a Democratic hopeful, warned China was a "strategic competitor" returning to a previous US foreign policy lexicon.
Republican candidates have been generally less concerned about China's economic tactics, than its military buildup.
In the latest edition of Foreign Affairs journal, Senator John McCain wrote that China could bolster its claim that it is "peacefully rising" by being more transparent about its military buildup.
"When China builds new submarines, adds hundreds of new jet fighters, modernizes its arsenal of strategic ballistic missiles, and tests anti-satellite weapons, the United States legitimately must question the intent of such provocative acts," McCain wrote.
