On Saturday, the Washington Post ran a front-page article on the story of North Korean refugees, or defectors, in Laos. It has been well-known for years that many North Koreans who try to get to South Korea transit through either Laos, Thailand, or Cambodia after leaving China. But until recently the government of Laos, though hard-line authoritarian, mostly seemed to ignore the fleeing North Koreans, as long as they had the money to pay off the right people and then get to the South Korean embassy in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, or to the border with Thailand. Yet in May, Laos’ government suddenly sent nine fleeing North Koreans, nearly all of whom are orphans, back to the North. The group had been detained by Laos’ security forces, but in the past North Koreans who had been detained often were let go, in exchange for cash, and then continued on to Thailand or to the South Korean embassy. This time,Laos’ government did not release the detainees, instead handing them over to Pyongyang.

With countries as opaque as Laos and North Korea, it can be hard to draw conclusions about any event, but the Post and other news outlets offer several speculations. One, that North Korea is pushing Southeast Asian nations harder to crack down on refugees, possibly providing financial incentives to do so. Or, the harsh and xenophobic government of Laos may have become more skittish about giving rights to anyone, including fleeing North Koreans, after facing a torrent of international criticism for the disappearance, last winter, of Laos’ best-known activist, who vanished after being seen at a police station in Vientiane.

What is interesting is that few of the news stories talk about the role of China, and whether China may have influenced the behavior of Laos– and potentially of other Southeast Asian nations with North Korean refugees in the future. Over the past decade,China has replaced Vietnam as the most important foreign actor in Laos: China is on track to becoming the largest investor in the country, pouring billions into Laos’ hydroelectric plants and roads and rails and other physical infrastructure, and Beijing has upgraded its defense ties with Laos significantly since the late 1990s. In the past five years, as China has become more assertive in its regional relations, and countries like Laos and Cambodia more dependent on Chinese investment and aid, Beijing has become more aggressive about enlisting Southeast Asian nations’ assistance in returning refugees from China itself, such as fleeing Uighurs. Cambodia, for example, in 2009 returned a group of fleeing Uighurs to China; shortly after this repatriation, which was condemned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR, China pledged nearly a billion dollars in grants and loans to Cambodia.

It is very possible that the pressure on the government of Laos to return the North Koreans came as much from China as from Pyongyang. Beijing has never considered the fleeing North Koreans refugees, always referring to them as economic migrants, or illegal economic migrants, thus depriving them of official refugee status in China. And in recent years China has taken a more proactive stance in deporting North Koreans from inside China back to the North. Overall, Beijing apparently wants to decrease the flow of fleeing North Koreans, to take no chances of destabilizing northeastern China with an influx of migrants or of destabilizing North Korea itself. As China becomes closer to the government of Laos, which in the past had more astutely played China and Vietnam and Thailand off of each other, preserving some measure of independence (at least as much independence as a tiny, poor, land-locked nation could have), Beijing likely is applying more pressure on Vientiane to proactively deport North Koreans. Combined with appeals from Pyongyang to Southeast Asian nations not to harbor fleeing refugees, China’s weighing in may create a new, even more dangerous situation for North Koreans in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, or even Thailand.

Right now, there are still at least twenty more North Koreans in the South Korean embassy in Vientiane. Will they face the same fate?

Only one week after proposing and then pulling the plug on inter-Korean dialogue over protocol differences, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)’s National Defense Commission on June 16 issued a surprise proposal for “high-level” U.S.-DPRK talks on easing of military tensions, establishment of a peace regime, and “various other issues both parties want to address, including the building of a nuclear-free world proposed by the United States.”

A White House statement in response to the offer emphasized the necessity of North Korea taking actions to show its commitment to denuclearization before the United States would accept talks. It stated that such actions would involve North Korea “living up to its obligations to the world, including compliance with the U.N. Security Council resolutions, and ultimately result in denuclearization.” In other words, without accompanying actions that show a North Korean willingness to enter “authentic” negotiations, the Obama administration assesses North Korea’s proposal as a non-starter.

While it is certainly preferable for North Korea to pursue diplomatic rather than missile or nuclear tests, all of North Korea’s neighbors by now are well aware of North Korea’s history of diplomatic initiatives as just another tool through which North Korea has sought to consolidate gains following periods in which North Korean brinkmanship has driven political tensions to high levels. To simply accept North Korea’s dialogue proposal and come back to the table as though nothing has changed since the last six party talks were held in 2008—or since North Korea’s dramatic reversal only two weeks after concluding the 2012 Leap Day understanding—would imply acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear  and ballistic missile tests.

South Korean media report that Xi Jinping flatly opposed a proposal from North Korea’s top military official Choe Ryong-hae during his visit to Beijing in late May that China accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. One of the major accomplishments of the Xi-Obama summit talks at the Sunnylands estate was the securing of a public pledge from China’s top leader that China will not accept a nuclear North Korea, while China continues to emphasize that the standoff be resolved peacefully through dialogue.

The timing of North Korea’s proposal to resume direct talks with the United States appears primarily designed to discern fissures in the converging positions of the United States, China, and South Korea on North Korea’s denuclearization. The North Korean proposal tests Sino-U.S. relations since the United States has conveyed that North Korea must take concrete actions to show its sincerity as a precondition for the resumption of nuclear talks while China has emphasized the importance of returning to dialogue even while affirming it will not accept a nuclear North Korea. It also tests the U.S.-ROK alliance by tempting the United States to bypass resumption of inter-Korean dialogue only a week after the North refused participation in proposed talks with Seoul in favor of U.S.-DPRK negotiations that would marginalize South Korea.

Regardless of the intention behind North Korea’s proposal, the National Defense Commission statement begins to lay the foundations for a North Korean climb down from its assertion of nuclear status through its statement that “the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is the behest of our leader and our general and the policy task that must be carried out by our party, state, and millions of soldiers and people without fail.” Since this statement stands at odds with North Korea’s inclusion of its nuclear status in the preamble of its constitution and its acknowledgment of nuclear weapons development as one of Kim Jong-il’s main contributions, sincerity of the statement will remain suspect absent accompanying concrete actions reinforcing the statement’s credibility.

Although North Korea’s statement provides Pyongyang’s first public recognition of the need for an exit strategy from its current situation, it is cloaked in defiance and makes an odd call on the United States to drop preconditions for talks while adding preconditions of its own. The preamble to North Korea’s offer of “high-level” dialogue demands that the United States stop “all forms of provocation, including sanctions.” In addition, the National Defense Commission statement claims that “our legitimate status as a nuclear weapons state will be maintained without the least wavering, regardless of whether others recognize it or not, until the denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula is realized and nuclear threats from outside are put to an end completely.” In other words, North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons program when hell freezes over, but let’s talk about it.

At the start of his second term in January, President Barack Obama announced a massive platform of new policy proposals. Since then, many of his ideas – on gun control, a solution to America’s debt crisis, and other issues – have been abandoned, leaving the president’s supporters on the left almost apoplectic. Yet even as he has backed off from fights on other issues, President Obama and his administration have continued to push for many new trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that encompasses much of Asia, the fastest-growing region in the world. The White House also has proposed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TATIP), a free trade deal with Europe.

As President Obama and the other leaders of the G-8 nations prepare to convene in Northern Ireland, a closer look at the U.S.’s trade agenda reveals that the Obama administration’s rhetoric is more smoke and mirrors than serious policy. Even if the TPP or the Europe deal were viable initiatives, the White House knows that they will almost surely never pass Congress, which took five years to approve free trade deals with even minnows like Panama and Colombia. On a broader scale, global trade and economic integration are in crisis. Banks are retreating from international deals. The World Trade Organization’s Doha Round is dead. Leading nations like France, China, and Brazil are throwing up new types of protectionism, and a new era of deglobalization – the opposite of global economic integration –has arrived.

I analyze the factors behind this deglobalization, including the failures of Asia’s regional trade pacts and the rise of state capitalism, in a new piece for BloombergBusinessweek. Read it here.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. There will be no Friday Asia Update next week, June 21st. 

1. Leaked NSA information could hurt U.S.-China ties; Snowden makes it to Hong Kong. Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine year-old Booz Allen Hamilton employee and contractor with the National Security Agency (NSA), fled to Hong Kong shortly before leaking information about a secretive NSA program called Prism. From Hong Kong, Snowden told Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post that the U.S. government has been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and mainland China for years. The unverified records show specific dates and IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and the mainland and suggest a 75 percent success rate. The U.S. Congress is currently probing Snowden’s background to discover if he has any ties to Chinese authorities. Multiple Chinese news sites have dedicated entire pages to the Snowden case, declaring “China opposes cyberattacks,” “the U.S. is a hacking empire,” and “Uncle Sam, Double Standards!” The case has overshadowed the recent meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping and will make cooperation on cybersecurity between the two countries even more difficult than it already was.

2. Obama and Abe discuss cooperation in the East China Sea. U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed the territorial dispute between China and Japan in the East China Sea during a phone call on Wednesday. Though the White House has tried to avoid taking a hard position on ownership of the disputed islands, Japan is a treaty ally of the United States. The two leaders also discussed nuclear threats from North Korea, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Obama’s recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

3. Vietnam’s leader takes a hit in confidence vote. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung survived Vietnam’s first confidence vote, with almost a third of lawmakers giving him a “low-confidence” ranking. Most of the low confidence votes were because of Dung’s economic policies and the country’s economic leaders—State Bank Governor Nguyen Van Binh received the largest numbers of low confidence votes. Vietnam’s economy is expected to grow only 5.5 percent this year, the first time since 1988 that it will be below 6 percent.

4. Chinese communist and Taiwanese nationalist leaders meet in Beijing. Chinese President and Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping hosted Taiwanese Kuomintang (Nationalist) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung in Beijing in a high-level meeting on Thursday. Xi called on both sides to “heal the historical trauma” of the 1949 split between the mainland and Taiwan. At the same time, the leader of Taiwan’s opposition (and pro-independence) Democratic Progressive Party, Su Tseng-chang, said that he would boost military spending if elected in a speech in Washington, DC.

5. Meeting between Koreas cancelled. Talks between North and South Korea to diffuse tensions were abruptly cancelled after the two sides could not agree on the composition of the delegations. Seoul originally intended to send its Minister for Unification, but Pyongyang only put forward a vice minister; taking this as a slight, the South downgraded its delegation to the Vice-Minister for Unification, and in response the North withdrew its offer of talks. Pyongyang failed to answer calls from Seoul on the newly reopened communication line between the two countries. There has not been a minister-level meeting between the two governments since 2007.

Bonus: Fake European village is setting for Chinese wedding photographs. Thames Town, a mock English village with Tudor buildings and churches outside Shanghai, serves as the backdrop for hundreds of Chinese weddings. See the pictures here.

For decades, during the rule of the military junta, Myanmar’s numerous internal problems spilled over its borders, sewing chaos along the frontiers with India,Thailand,China, and Bangladesh. Myanmar’s narcotics producers flooded Thailand and other countries with methamphetamines and heroin, Myanmar’s numerous civil wars sent hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling into Thailand and Bangladesh and created a profitable cross-border illegal arms trade in India, and Myanmar’s combination of rape as a weapon of war and massive migration created some of the most virulent strains of HIV/AIDS in Asia, which then spread into China and Thailand.

With the reforms in Myanmar since 2010, there has been considerable hope among the country’s neighbors that political change also would reduce the burdens Myanmar’s serious domestic problems placed on them. Thailand hopes to send back thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Myanmar migrants, and to be able to better cooperate with the Myanmar government in shutting down drug production in Myanmar’s wild northeast.  China hopes that the cease-fire between the Kachin Independence Army and the Myanmar government – seemingly the most stable cease-fire with the KIA in decades – will decrease migration into China and keep China from having to play a larger role in the KIA-Myanmar dispute. Overall, the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has hoped that, with Myanmar no longer a pariah, it will be easier for the group to reach consensus on regional issues, and ASEAN will be able to punch at a higher weight internationally.

Yet in some ways, the reverse of these aspirations is happening. The cease-fire in Kachin State is a clear step forward. But Myanmar’s inter-religious violence, which seemed confined to Rakhine State last year, now is spreading across the country, even to places, such as Lashio in Shan State, in which there have been few Muslim-Buddhist clashes in modern history and where there are few Muslims living anyway. And now the violence is spreading to other countries in the region, sucking them into Myanmar’s battles; they already are being sucked in by the outflow of Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State. In the past two weeks, at least eight people have been killed in Malaysia. Buddhist and Muslims from Myanmar have begun attacking each other in Kuala Lumpur. (There are hundreds of thousands of people from Myanmar living in Malaysia, mostly doing low-paying labor.) This comes just after violence between Myanmar Buddhist and Muslim refugees in Indonesia resulted in several deaths.

Yet, just as on the issue of how to handle Rohingya refugees, on the broader problem ofMyanmar’s spiraling inter-religious conflict, ASEAN is almost nowhere to be seen. Other than Indonesia, most ASEAN members have not been proactive in trying to help Myanmar tamp down tensions, and the region has no coherent plan for addressing the Rohingya “boat people” turning up in Thailand, Malaysia, and elsewhere.

In the Asian Review of Books, editor Peter Gordon reviews both my new book Democracy in Retreat and a forthcoming book by longtime China journalist Joe Studwell, How Asia Works; Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region. I have always found Studwell’s work to be among the most thought-provoking and contrarian on Asia – the two often go together – and his new work is no exception. It adds to the growing literature suggesting that the modern state capitalists, like China, are pursuing models of development not only sharply different from those advocated by the West but also different from the Asian tigers and tiger cubs – many China-watchers have suggested that China’s model is simply an updated version of what worked earlier, for nations like South Korea. I will be adding my own contribution to the state capitalism debate in the next year. Read the whole review here.

When the United States and China move closer to each other, leaders of the two Koreas are apt to start talking. An unanticipated side effect of Nixon’s rapprochement with China in the early 1970s was that both Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee established secret talks in response to a new strategic reality in which their respective patrons had established dialogue. Those talks led to a landmark inter-Korean joint declaration on July 4, 1972. Although the Obama-Xi Sunnylands summit was advertised as an introductory session not designed to produce deliverables, one indirect effect of the summit is that it has jumpstarted inter-Korean dialogue. The first working-level inter-Korean talks between the Park Geun-hye and Kim Jong-un leaderships is being held at Panmunjom nearly simultaneously with the Xi-Obama summit.

The positive effects of high-level Sino-U.S. dialogue on inter-Korean relations can be shortlived. A spike in inter-Korean tensions following North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island in November 2010 drove North Korea up the agenda of U.S.-China relations as both countries prepared for Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington in January 2011. In anticipation of Hu’s White House visit, North and South Korea announced high-level talks between military officials, but by the time that meeting was held, momentum had shifted and inter-Korean military talks failed.

This time, the first step in relaxation of inter-Korean tensions accompanied Secretary Kerry’s first visit to Beijing as Secretary of State in mid-April. A series of high-level visits by U.S. officials including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dempsey accompanied North Korea’s familiar tactical shift from brinkmanship to charm offensive in May. Following the announcement of the Xi-Obama summit later that month, North Korea’s top general Choe Ryong-hae delivered a letter to Xi from Kim Jong-un. However, Xi and his colleagues met Choe with a consistent and stern public message that “all the parties involved should stick to the objective of denuclearization, safeguard peace and stability on the peninsula, and resolve disputes through dialogue and consultation.” This rhetorical reordering  of Chinese priorities placing denuclearization equivalent with stability was a clear message to North Korea. For his part, General Choe pledged North Korea’s commitment to renewed dialogue, but neglected to mention denuclearization.

Days in advance of the Obama-Xi summit, North Korea suddenly offered and South Korea rapidly accepted resumption of inter-Korean talks. Representatives of the two Koreas agreed  in meetings at Panmunjom the day after the Sino-U.S. summit to hold “government talks” in Seoul on Wednesday and Thursday of this week to discuss resumption of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the future of the joint Mount Kumgang resort, and reunion events for families separated by the Korean War– all of which are projects that would benefit North Korea economically if they are resumed. South Korea resisted North Korean demands to hold non-governmental meetings to commemorate the anniversary of the June 15, 2000 and July 4, 1972 joint declarations.

Both Koreas have a strong incentive to advance inter-Korean talks prior to Park Geun-hye’s visit to Beijing scheduled for the end of June, where reports are that President Xi is prepared to roll out the red carpet for her. Having solidified the U.S.-ROK alliance during her early May visit to Washington, a step forward on Trustpolitik would help Park in relations with Beijing, while Pyongyang has a double economic and political incentive to cooperate with Seoul both to forestall greater Sino-ROK cooperation on North Korean denuclearization and to lessen growing economic dependency on Beijing.

In his readout to the press following the Obama-Xi summit, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon emphasized Sino-U.S. “alignment” on North Korea, including Chinese pledges to deepen “cooperation and dialogue to achieve denuclearization.” Donilon’s characterization of the outcome of the conversation was that both sides will “apply pressure both to halt North Korea’s ability to proliferate and to make clear that its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons is incompatible with its economic development goals.” By pushing for a U.S.-(ROK)-PRC alignment in opposition to a nuclear North Korea, the Obama administration is reaching a crunch point in its efforts to prove to North Korea’s leaders that Pyongyang’s nuclear development efforts are regime-endangering, and that the future of the North’s economic development—and regime survival—in fact turn on North Korea’s denuclearization.

By most any measure, the Sunnylands summit cast some sunshine on the U.S.-China relationship. The optics were positive with plenty of snapshots of the two presidents walking, talking, and smiling. President Obama even referred to the talks as “terrific.” There were the usual agreements to talk more and to meet more, and both presidents reaffirmed the need and desire of the two countries to work together more effectively.

Clearly Washington and Beijing planned and executed well—that alone represented a sharp break from past precedent. Recent summits have been plagued by missteps. Remember the 2006 summit between Presidents Hu Jintao and George W. Bush in Washington, DC, when the PRC national anthem was announced as the Republic of China anthem. And who can forget the stunning lack of hospitality exhibited by the Chinese at the 2009 summit when, among other unfortunate happenings, Beijing reneged on its promise to televise President Obama’s town hall in Shanghai?

This time around, the Chinese were nothing if not gracious. They produced a deliverable on one of the United States’ hot button issues—North Korea—even before the summit began. After Xi Jinping met with a North Korean envoy in late May, DPRK leader Kim Jong-un offered to conduct high-level talks with South Korea. While causality cannot be proved, the sequence of events is certainly suggestive. In addition, in a rare return to the type of human rights diplomacy of earlier summits, Beijing granted passports to two relatives of blind-lawyer Chen Guangcheng, who sought asylum in the United States just a year ago and currently resides in New York City, and released Chinese-born U.S. scientist Hu Zhicheng, who had been held in China for five years on charges of stealing secrets.

Niceties aside, the Xi-Obama summit represents only the first step toward getting the U.S.-China bilateral relationship on more solid footing. For real progress in the relationship, there will have to be real progress across the wide range of issues that continue to bedevil the two countries. The two sides made some small progress on climate change, signing an agreement to cooperate on eliminating HFCs. The tougher issues remain, however. Cyber hacking has been relegated to the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, where issues generally experience a slow and painful death without actually ever dying. President Obama offered some optimistic remarks to the effect that the United States and China will increasingly have common cause on issues of cyber espionage as China’s intellectual property (IP) develops. After two decades of countless American officials and analysts arguing that as soon as China develops its own IP, Beijing will better protect that of others, I would guess that President Obama should probably not hold his breath on that one.

Conflicts in the East and South China Sea—among the most challenging issues the two countries face at the moment—were not addressed explicitly in the presidents’ summit remarks. And it is difficult to know whether to expect any real progress on the endless range of trade and investment issues to which both presidents and their representatives referred.

At the heart of the summit, however, was President Xi’s desire to be treated with respect and to have China and the United States forge a “new relationship among major powers.” President Xi got half of his wish. Certainly President Obama treated President Xi with respect; however he resisted Chinese efforts to elevate the U.S.-China relationship beyond that of the United States’ relations with its allies. While President Obama acknowledged that the two countries needed to have a “new model of cooperation,” he carefully avoided the Chinese phraseology of a “new model of major country relationships.”

While perhaps not the best outcome for President Xi, President Obama has it right. A special partnership of the sort that China seeks can only arise after the two countries have achieved a series of policy successes premised on common values and approaches. Until then, the leaders and people of both countries should be pleased that the summit was good enough: it brought a new more positive energy to the bilateral relationship, stressed cooperation as opposed to conflict, and offered a few of the win-wins that have been so scarce in recent years.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Obama and Xi convene in Sunnylands. The much-touted two-day summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping began on Friday. Cybersecurity and North Korea are expected to be topics raised by the U.S. side, while China would like to hear more about the U.S. pivot to Asia. Experts are generally hopeful that the summit will increase familiarity, though most are quick to temper any hopes of real deliverables coming from the meeting. For its part, China’s state-sponsored Global Times states that the summit “represents not only a conversation in which both leaders can exchange ideas on important global issues, but also puts forward a glimpse of what China’s future might look like when it catches up with the United States.”

2. Positive steps on the Korean Peninsula. On Thursday, North Korea proposed government-to-government talks, which would be the first in years. Pyongyang also offered to reconnect a Red Cross hotline that was cut in March following North Korea’s February 12 nuclear test. The two Koreas are planning talks to discuss a proposed cabinet-level meeting in Seoul, which would be the first in six years. The new diplomatic efforts are a welcome reprieve from months of bellicose rhetoric from the North and heightened tensions on the Peninsula; how long the détente lasts, however, is remains an open question.

3. Japan and France tighten nuclear ties. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and French President Francois Hollande met in Tokyo on Friday to discuss nuclear and defense ties. The two leaders signed a five-year action plan to work together to supply nuclear technology to export markets. Though the two countries are competitors in nuclear-reactor exports, the cooperation is seen as a response to cheaper Chinese reactors. Tokyo has expressed concern to Paris about French military exports to China.

4. China and Vietnam establish a naval hotline. The defense ministries of China and Vietnam agreed to set up a hotline between their respective navies. Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA, stated that “amid rapid changes in international and regional situation, it is significant that the two countries hold talks on defence and security issues, seek effective control of the current disputes and solutions to related issues.” The hotline will hopefully serve as another outlet to resolve flare-ups in the South China Sea. All is not well between the two countries however, as a rare demonstration occurred in Hanoi against China on June 3. Many Vietnamese citizens feel that China is bullying Vietnam in the South China Sea and the government is not doing enough in response.

5. Poultry plant fire in China is one of the worst in years. A fire at a poultry plant in northeast China on Monday killed 120 and injured seventy-seven. Two senior executives of Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Company were detained as part of a criminal investigation that uncovered major security breaches—the plant lacked fire extinguishers and locked nearly all the exits to prevent employees from leaving. The same factory had burst into flames once before, four years ago. About 70,000 workers are killed on the job each year in China.

Bonus: Chinese high school students take gaokao (college entry exam). On Friday, nine million high school students began the three-day-long gaokao, China’s college entrance exam. This year, students will only be allowed to take the test where they hold a hukou, or household registry, rather than their current residence. The gaokao has long been criticized for its lack of creativity and testing non-essential information. It includes essay prompts such as “Why chase mice when there are fish to eat?”

Leading up to today’s summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the drumbeat from Beijing has been consistent and insistent: China and the United States should build a “new type of great power relations.” The message from the U.S. side, in contrast, has been all about the specifics: cyber-hacking, North Korea, human rights, and economic issues. Both sides are touting the opportunity for the two presidents to get to know each other, but it won’t be easy if they are not speaking the same language.

The truth is that Washington and Beijing rarely approach the relationship in the same manner. The Chinese approach the relationship by first establishing a concept or set of principles; details to follow. The United States, in contrast, is all about the issues and the details. Establishing a concept for the relationship or putting it in a framework is a fourth or fifth-order issue.

This time around the Chinese are trying their best to flesh out their concept of a new relationship—an acknowledgement, perhaps, that it won’t go anywhere if there aren’t specifics attached. Yet the proliferation of official and semi-official Chinese voices has produced a din that makes it difficult to discern the real message. Some Chinese officials argue that the new relationship depends on the United States; China has already done its part. Former Chinese Ambassador Lü Fengding, for example, has claimed that “…since China has done its utmost to show its sincerity, Americans should take practical steps as well. At the very least, the US should stop fabricating excuses, such as alleged cyber-attacks to vilify China, mislead the American public opinion and sabotage a [sic] prosperous Sino-American relations. The United States should also try to clarify its intentions for implementing its rebalancing strategy in Asia-Pacific, as well as refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs on matters of the Chinese core interests.”

Others are more even-handed. According to Yang Jiemian, a leading Chinese scholar and brother of former Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi, the new relationship means new thoughts, new thinking, a new code of conduct, and new values. More specifically, Yang suggests that the United States and China should transcend their difference in ideologies; establish new attitudes to build up new shared values; mutually support each other on important global issues; and coordinate strategic thoughts and policies. And China Institute of International Studies Vice President Ruan Zongze has argued that the main purpose of the new relationship is to “avoid a zero-sum game featuring historical relations between big powers jostling for hegemony by force.”

Threaded through all these disparate views, however, is a sense that there is something more that the Chinese are seeking, something they don’t want to have to ask for, namely, as Jamil Anderlini suggests in the Financial Times, a partnership of equals. However, it appears that for now the United States is not prepared to endorse such a partnership. Instead it has elected to interpret the Chinese concept of a new type of great power relations only in the narrowest sense—that put forward by Ruan. Former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, in a speech before the Asia Society, noted that it “falls to both sides—the United States and China—to build a new model of relations between an existing power and an emerging one” in order to avoid realizing “the premise put forward by some historians and theorists that a rising power and an established power are somehow destined for conflict.”

For its part, the United States isn’t advancing any new ideas for the summit and, thus, there is not much confusion over its message. The United States wants what it always wants—China to stop: stop cyberhacking, stop IP theft, stop human rights abuses, stop North Korea’s nuclear program, stop ratcheting up tensions in the East and South China Sea, and stop establishing barriers to free trade and investment.

As deaf as the United States appears to China’s hopes for the summit, the Chinese are equally deaf to U.S. calls. Maybe it’s not that the two countries don’t speak the same language, it’s just that they don’t want to hear what the other is saying.