Video: Kevin Rudd on How Economic Priorities Are Shaping China's Relations with Japan and the US

Video: Incoming Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd speaks with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on November 11, 2014. (10 min., 12 sec.)

Incoming Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd says he believes the November 11, 2014 meeting between President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit signaled “the formalization of the beginnings of a renormalization” after months of diplomacy.

Speaking with CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour on November 11, Rudd said he believes China and Japan “recognize that it was not in either of their interests to risk, A, the possibility of conflict, and B, they had more to gain in fact by removing political obstacles which currently exist to the further expansion of the Japan-China economic relationship.”

Rudd also argued that the relationship between the U.S. and China has “sufficient commonality of interests and values for the two countries to really do good things together bilaterally, regionally, and globally.”

Rudd said he believes Beijing’s posture toward the U.S. may be influenced by the improving economic outlook in the United States.

“I believe that as this meeting [between U.S. President Barack Obama and President Xi] occurs, there will be a sense of some mutual respect about the respective state of their economy and remember momentarily the U.S. remains the vastly dominant economic power in the region still, despite the Chinese military modernization program,” Rudd said.

For Xi, Rudd said, “the long-term basis of Chinese power [is] a properly functioning economy,” which the Chinese government is trying to establish through reform.