The New York Times has a long piece today documenting the evolution of President Obama’s approach to China. These two paragraphs jumped out at me:
America’s eastward shift has left the Chinese deeply suspicious of American motives, with some analysts in China arguing that the United States is trying to encircle the country. For all the talk of give-and-take, the Chinese rebuffed Mrs. Clinton during her recent visit to Beijing when she raised the disputes over the South China Sea.
“The Chinese feel a bit whiplashed,” said Michael J. Green, an Asia policy maker in the administration of George W. Bush who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The hope and change of the first year, followed by the sharp-edged push-back of the second year, all of this, to the Chinese, looks like gross inconsistency and unpredictability.”
Well, the United States is trying to encircle the country, a fact that the Chinese aren’t foolish enough to ignore. In recent years the U.S. has strengthened its partnership with India, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan, countries that form a neat perimeter around China. Washington isn’t doing this in order to embarrass or upset China, but rather to protect what it views are its strategic interests in the region. China knows this, of course, but still find it useful to complain about.
What’s usually lost in analyses of US-China relations is how large a role domestic politics- in both countries- plays. Elected in part to remove the toxicity surrounding the Bush years, President Obama pledged that his less confrontational foreign policy approach would pay dividends. In respect to China, Obama refused to meet with the Dalai Lama had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton downplay the importance of human rights in the Sino-American relationship. Four years into his presidency, his domestic calculus is different and he now gains from being tougher on China. As a result, his rhetoric has become far more combative.
Likewise, Beijing knows that the long-term strategy in the Pacific is to contain Chinese influence, particularly over the vital sea lanes that regulate commerce. However, the Communist Party gains legitimacy by playing on the nationalist feelings of the population, and as a result they frequently issue public complaints of American meddling in their affairs.
For all the commentary that Obama, who grew up partially in Indonesia, somehow lacks sufficient reverence for China, Sino-American affairs have largely remained constant under his watch and in all respects are likely to do so in the coming years.
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