It was predictable. United States president Barack Obama would visit with his counterpart, Hu Jintao at home, in China. They would issue separate statements rather than a joint communiqué. Trade and the economy would loom large while climate change, human rights, Tibet and the Dalai Lama might get a brief mention.

This is not the act of ignoring, or not recognising, the elephant in the room. Both are elephants - mind you, different types - but they know they cannot do without each other.

They know their economic, social and political systems are so different; their areas of manoeuvre are quite well-defined and not to be trifled with.

A few months ago, a top official Chinese financial team visited Washington. They wanted to know about the prospects of the new health care bill. But their interest was not in the so-called 'public option', nor end-of-life counselling.

They wanted to know how the programme was to be paid for. This is no surprise, since China holds the single largest chunk of US-government debt of any of its trading partners. Notice the price of gold is on the rise, signifying that some wealth-holders are a bit concerned about the potential stability of the dollar.

Of course, among these buyers, are your ever-present speculators and other such market 'players'.

Charles de Gaulle must be squirming in his grave. Finally, what he called that "exorbitant privilege" the US enjoys as a result of being issuer of the world's currency is, today, tenuous.

Yet, this is no cause for anyone, even perhaps the gravest enemies of the US, to rejoice. For a little more than half a century, America's dissaving and consumption has been part of the essential fuel to the world economy. Most recently however, that fuel became bubbly, floated by sub-prime housing mortgages, fancy derivatives and other 'financial esoterics' created by Wall Street's 'Quants'.

Theoretical world

They forgot, or perhaps, never knew, that human behaviour never mimics the randomness we find in the physical world - or rather the theoretical world that physicists, statisticians and probability theorists may inhabit.

China is unhappy about these developments of the past year.

Today, their top bosses wonder why Wall Street cannot be made to suffer real rebuke ending in prudent regulation. Yet, 5,000 years of history, twists and turns of communism and the 'Cultural Revolution', gave way to, or perhaps enabled Deng Xiaoping's embrace of a pragmatism that sees capitalism coexisting in a strange way with the communist party.

So, much as it will tend to push China's development of a larger middle class more quickly - something the leadership appears not to embrace too fondly - domestic stimulus must be implemented.

Obama praises them for this and simultaneously laments the policy of undervaluing the yuan.

While Obama's speech is carried on TV, bits and pieces, especially the bit about freedom of Internet access, has been cut out.

Hu Jintao defines human rights as a matter of internal affairs.

"The relationship between the United States and China has never been more important to our collective future," said Obama. And he means it. It is objectively, absolutely true. The question is: Can America catch up with the Obama team in its 21st century view of the world?

Climate change is real but China wishes, not unreasonably, to have a lighter burden in combating it. They view themselves as a developing country even though, in about 15 years, they will have equalled the GNP of the US. Right now, their Internet-enabled population is about the same as the total US population of 300 million.

Common interests

Hu, who after their Beijing meeting, took the podium first and spoke through a translator, said the US and China "share extensive common interests" on the issues that affect "mankind's peace and stability and development".

This is also true.

Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kwan Yew who has an uncanny understanding of the Chinese 'psyche' and cultural longevity simply feels that China must be invited to the table. But that invitation must, even if prompted by pure economic necessity, come to be seen as deriving from respect.

This is what it seems President Obama had in mind during this visit to a place where he is a celebrity, yes, but nonesuch as in Europe and elsewhere. These developments and the tone of his and Hu Jintao's 'agree-to-disagree-while-cooperating' speeches augur well for a future that too often seems plagued by extremists, ideologues and fundamentalists whom the ages seem to have taught nothing.

Shared sacrifice

What can we take home from all this in Jamaica today? I wonder. Could our government engage our business moguls and other elite groups, power brokers, nurses, teachers, police, etc, in this kind of frank, yet restrained, dialogue that identifies the fact that they can't do without each other? That Jamaica's 'out of many one people' is a goal that is yet worth striving to achieve?

Can a vision of shared sacrifice and, perhaps, ultimate reduction of inequality, emerge from such dialogue?

Seems there would have to be enormous change in the mindset of many. But, who knows?

Wilberne Persaud Financial Gleaner Columnist

wilbe65@yahoo.com