By Paul Eckert
HONOLULU | Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:09am EST
(Reuters) - With the United States facing a multipronged challenge from China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on Thursday that the 21st century will be "America's Pacific century" and said the region's problems require U.S. leadership.
While stressing that the Obama administration will seek improved ties with China, Clinton used a speech ahead of an Asia-Pacific summit here to dissuade Beijing and others from thinking the United States is ceding its traditional role in the Pacific.
"There are challenges facing the Asia-Pacific right now that demand America's leadership, from ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea to countering North Korea's provocations and proliferation activities to promoting balanced and inclusive economic growth," she said.
Clinton's remarks, in a speech at the East-West Center, were part of a campaign by President Barack Obama to "pivot" U.S. foreign policy to focus more intensely on Asia after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that, in the 21st century, the world's strategic and economic center of gravity will be the Asia-Pacific, from the Indian subcontinent to western shores of the Americas," she said.
"One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will be to lock in a substantially increased investment -- diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise -- in this region," Clinton told students and scholars at the East-West Center, a Honolulu think tank.
While saying China and the United States needed to cooperate to stimulate global economic growth, Clinton delivered criticisms of Beijing's human rights policies that were certain to anger China's leaders.
"We are alarmed by recent incidents in Tibet of young people lighting themselves on fire in desperate acts of protest, as well as the continued house arrest of the Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng," Clinton said, referring to recent cases in China.
Read more at REUTERS
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