SANGER

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — New York Times chief Washington correspondent David E. Sanger asked the audience to imagine this conversation between President Hu Jintauo of China, and U.S. President George W. Bush.

“ ‘Mr. Bush,’ ” Hu would say in such an imaginary conversation, “ ‘as you know, we’ve been reading your speeches and we think you’re right. The Middle East really does need to be turned into a vibrant democracy radiating out from Iraq. And I can’t think of a better country to get the job done than the United States.

“ ‘So while you guys go at it and spend the next 15 years or so focused on that project, send us a postcard every once in a while and let us know how it’s going. And by the time you’re done, our economy may be as just about as big as yours.’ ”

The point, Sanger said Tuesday at a URI Honors Colloquium, “China Rising,” “is that for the past few years we have been so focused on a civil war, and so focused on the subject of terrorism, that we have narrowed our sights …”

When the history of this era is written, he suggested, “some will question whether we were truly focusing on the deep historical forces at work in our country and around the world, or whether or not we got so boxed in, in one narrow area, in one war, that we lost track.”

Said Sanger, China’s rise isn’t something that this president or the next can prevent. It’s a fact of life, he said, and it’s a fact that will be a rough ride at times.

Whether a rising China is something the United States can live with will be “one of our greatest strategic challenges” in the years ahead.

The semester-long URI colloquium explores China’s transformation during the past three decades. It continues next Tuesday.

During his 24 years at The Times, Sanger has traveled the world, covering nuclear proliferation in North Korea, globalization, Asian affairs, and currently, the Bush administration.

He is also acutely aware that such weighty matters aside, the world revolves around baseball.

Sanger noted that — phew!! — his pre-scheduled lecture fell on the night before the Red Sox play the first game of the American League Division Series against the Los Angeles Angels. He also sprinkled his lecture with baseball analogies (“When you talk about Japan and China, think Yankees and Red Sox, but without all that goodwill”).

Sanger’s lecture focused on what he called a come-full-circle “sea change” in the Bush administration’s strategy in dealing with China.

During his first term, influenced by the neoconservatives surrounding him, Mr. Bush treated China as a strategic competitor, said Sanger. Now he is trying to engage China in a strategic partnership — the sort of effort that Mr. Bush once ridiculed the Clinton administration for — “and he is trying to take it to levels that his predecessors would scarcely imagine.”

Sanger said, “The Chinese are, as always, canny and reluctant players in that game.”

“In the same month the Chinese can help us in dealing with North Korea as they have done this past week in trying to reach an agreement about arranging a schedule for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear facilities, it can do something that is highly symbolic like shooting down an aging satellite that is hovering above Chinese territories just to prove to us that they know how.”

“They can, in the same week or month, talk sweetly about cleaning up Beijing for the Olympics, and why it is the Kyoto protocols should not apply to them ….”

While the United States tries to engage China as a strategic partner through treaties and agreements — some of which China’s leaders will likely sign — “I think they will do everything they can, as we would do, to make sure their hands are not tied,” said Sanger.

While the past few decades have been rife with warnings “about the dangers of looking at the current balance of power” in the world, and assuming things will look the same, or nearly the same, a few years from now. The only thing one can say for sure, he said, “is that it won’t.”

For a colloquium schedule and further information, go to www.uri.edu/hc or call Deborah Gardiner at (401) 874-2381.

kziner@projo.com