Shoring up US Leadership in the Asia-Pacific: the Obama Administration’s Hedge Strategy against China

Suisheng Zhao
Draft to be presented at
The 2011 Fulbright Symposium “Australia-US Relations and the Rise of China: From
Bilateralism to Trilateralism?”
11-12th August 2011
Burwood Campus, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia


About one year into the Barack Obama presidency, there was a discernible
adjustment in his China policy. Moving away from single-minded efforts to build an
enduring cooperation with China on issues of shared interests, the Obama administration
brought back the hedge strategy by taking firmer positions on issues of fundamental
disagreements, shoring up its leadership and renewing alliances with Asian-Pacific
countries sharing the most foundamental US values and interests, even if it meant
challenging China’s interests. This policy adjustment was interpreted by some Western
commentators as “a shift from its assiduous one-on-one courtship of Beijing… to line up
coalitions to present Chinese leaders with a unified front on thorny issues.” It was
“reinvigorating cold-war alliances” in East Asia to contain China’s rise.
1 It also fueled
the fears among some Chinese about the US encirclement. A Chinese scholar warned that
the Obama administration adjusted its policy in an attempt to cozy up to ASEAN
countries and contain China's rise.
2
                                             
1
In response to the adjustment, a PLA Daily
Mark Landler and Sewell Chan, “Taking Harder Stance Toward China, Obama Lines
Up Allies,” New York Times, October 25, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/world/asia/26china.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
2 Li Bing, “Time to counter U.S. ploys,” Xinhua, July 29, 2010.2
commentary accused the US of carrying out three “isms”: hegemonism, gunshipism, and
unilateralism. Stating that “although we would not want to be the enemy of any country,
we would not be fear of any country which dares to ignore our solemn position and core
interests,” the commentary quoted Mao Zedong’s saying that “If no one harms me, I
harm no one, but if someone harms me, I must harm them.”
3
Is there a shift of the Obama’s China policy? What are the causes if there is? Does
the tougher position represent a move of the US policy toward the direction of contaning
China? Where is the direction of US-China relationship under President Obama’s watch?
Seeking answers to these questions, this paper finds that while President Obama came
into office with a “Not Bush” policy to positively engage China, he quickly discovered
the limitations of cooperation with China because of the mismatch of natonal interests
and values and the suspicions and sensitivities between Washington and Beijing. No
longer reluctant to clash with Beijing on sensitive issues such as the territorial disputes in
the South China Sea, the administration moved beyond the strategic reassurance to China
and reassured allies that the US will actively defend its interests in the region. There are
two major causes for the policy adjustemnt. The precipitating cause is China’s newly
founded assertiveness during the global financial crisis and the deeper one is the
American anciety about the implications of China’s great power aspirations in the 21
st
century. The policy shift is, however, not to contain China but a return to the centralist
approach to engage China from US strength rather than from US weakness.
US China Policy Swings and President Obama’s Positive Engagement
A centralist approach to cooperate with China on shared interests while confront
China on conflicted interests has been at the core of the US engagement policy toward
China. Because of US presidential cycles, however, the arrival of a new president from
the different party has often produced a swing of China policy toward one or another
extreme as a result of the new administration’s attempts to change or reverse the its
predecessor’s foreign policy. Creating new uncertainties for the US-China relationship
and even damages to the US interests, the new administration, after a period of dancing
                                             
3 Luo Ruan, “The US sending aircraft carrier to the Yellow Sea shows its gunboat
policy,” PLA Daily, August 12, 2010, http://chn.chinamil.com.cn/xwpdxw/jsyxxw/2010-
08/12/content_4277766.htm3
around,  has always returned to the centralist approach. Four presidential cycles have
brought four China policy swings since normalization of the relationship in the late
1970s.
The first swing came in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was running for the White
House as a republican candidate and declared a desire to reverse the policy of his
democratic opponent, President Jimmy Carter, by restoring official relationship with
Taiwan and putting restrictions on Chinese textile exports to the US and the American
technology transfer to China. Entering the white House, however, President Reagan
quickly realized the damage of deteriorating US-China relations to the US strategic
interests in the power competition with the Soviet Union. To prevent a serious rupture of
the relationship, he signed the third joint communiqué with Beijing to set the parameters
of American arms sales to Taiwan in 1982. The following year, his administration
announced a relaxation of its restrictions on the transfer of advanced technology to China
and President Reagan made a state visit to Beijing in April 1984.4
The election of President Bill Clinton in 1993 brought the Democratic Party back
to the White House and started the second swing. Accusing his Republican opponent,
President George H. Bush, insensitive to human rights abuse in China during the
presidential campaign, upon entering the White House, President Clinton issued an
Executive order to establish human rights related conditions for extension of China’s
MFN beyond July 1994. With a rocky start in relations with China, however, he had to
announce an end of the linkage policy in May 1994 because European countries and even
Taiwan took full advantage of the chilly Sino-American ties and landed billions of dollars
of business contracts in the emerging Chinese market. After the Taiwan Strait crisis in
1995- 1996, President Clinton learned that the US-China relationship was concerned not
only trade and human rights but foremost about war and peace. In its second term, the
Clinton administration came to seek a strategic dialogue with China and signed a joint
                                             
4 Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: the United States and China since 1972,
Washington DC, Brookings Institution, 1992, pp. 107-172.4
statement with his Chinese counterpart in October 1997 to build a constructive strategic
partnership toward the twenty-first century.
5
The third swing came when Republican President George W. Bush took over
office in 2001 and started with an “ABC” (everything but Clinton) policy. In bilateral
relationship with China, while President Clinton sought to build a constructive strategic
partnership, President Bush claimed that China was a strategic competitor and potential
security rival. In the Asia-Pacific regional policy, while the Clinton administration placed
China at the top of its policy priority, the Bush administration pledged to rely on
strengthened alliance relationships, particularly with Japan, as the foundation of the U.S.
policy in the region. On the sensitive Taiwan issue, while Clinton declared a "three no's"
(not recognizing two Chinas or one China, one Taiwan; not supporting independence for
Taiwan; and not backing Taiwan to join international organizations that require
sovereignty for membership), the Bush administration repeatedly talked about its
obligation to the defense of Taiwan according to the Taiwan Relations Act. In April
2001, President Bush approved the largest package of arms sales to Taiwan since Bush sr.
sold 150 F-16 fighters to the island about a decade ago. These policy actions caused
serious tensions in US-China relations. A mid-air collision of Chinese jetfighter with a
U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea on April 1, 2001 touched off a
tense, 11-day crisis and provided an opportunity for the Bush administration to seriously
look at the importance of US-China relations. After the September terrorist attacks,
President Bush began to rebalance his policy toward China as consultation and
cooperation with Beijing became necessary for the U.S. effort to build a global coalition
against terrorism.
Charaterizing that the US-China relationship as as complex with a mix of
cooperative and competitive interests at a May 2005 press conference, President Bush
started to engage China with a hedge behind. His Deputy Secretary of State Robert
Zoellick elaborated the strategy in an important policy statement in September 2005.
Calling for a cooperative relationship with China on a wide range of global challenges,
Zoellick raised the concern about how China will use its power, criticized China's
                                             
5 David M. Lampton, Sam Bed Different Dreams: Managing US-China Relations, 1989-
2000, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001, pp. 111-155.5
“involvement with troublesome states” and its “mercantilist” attempts to “lock up”
energy resources, and urged China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the
international system.
6
The Obama presidency started the fourth swing in 2009. Criticising the Bush
administration’s unilateralism that not only costed heavily of US national resources but
also damaged US moral leadership in the world, President Obama was to repair
America's image around the world. One of his foreign policy priorities was to reset
relations with great powers, especially a rising China, to help the US economic recovery
and resolve many other global issues during the most serious recession in the US since
the 1930s. “The United States and China now have to look at each other straight in the
eyes,” because “power is more equally distributed between them and each needs to
cooperate with the other to address problems it deems critical to its own future.”
The Bush administration thereafter mantained a cooperative but
candid relationship with China. In the last months of his presidency, Bush attended the
controversal Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies and also announced a long-pending
package of arms sales to Taiwan.
7
Therefore, “It took just one month for U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy
team to establish its line on China: more cooperation on more issues more often.”
8
The Obama administration proposed a “positive, cooperative, and
comprehensive” relationship to replace Bush’s “cooperative, constructive, and candid”
relationship with China. Using “positive” to replace “candid” reflected the Obama
administration’s reluctance to challenge China on issues of fundamental disagreements
Pushing hard to elevate the US-China relationship through cooperation on global issues
of consequence to both countries, President Obama eschewed the balance of-power
approach of his Republican predececor and down-played the hedge behind President
Bush’s enegagement with China.
                                             
6 Robert B. Zoellick, “Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility?” NBR
Analysis, vol. 16, no. 4, December 2005.
7 David M. Lampton, “The United States and China in the Age of Obama: Looking Each
Other Straight in the Eyes,” Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 18, no. 62, November
2009, pp. 705, 727.
8 Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal, “The G-2 Mirage: Why the United States and
China Are Not Ready to Upgrade Ties,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 20096
and its intention to make sure that disagreements on these issues would not interfere with
the engagement to pursue shared interests. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton en route to
China in February 2009 expressed this position clearly when she told the reporters that
the administration would not allow the contentious issues such as human rights, Taiwan
and Tibet to “interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis
and the security crises.”
9
Setting the right tone before his first official visit to China in November 2009,
President Obama made two major concessions on the sensitive issues to China. One was
to postpone the meeting with the Dalai Lama when the Tibetan religion leader visited
Washington DC in October 2009, a departure from a significant US presidential tradition.
The other was to defer the announcement on arms sales to Taiwan for 11 months. To
signal U.S. understanding of China's core interests, the US-China joint statement after
President Obama’s first state visit to Beijing stated for the first time that “the two sides
agreed that respecting each other’s core interests is extremely important to ensure steady
progress in U.S.-China relations.” President Obama also had no hesitation to elevate his
high level dialogue with China as “strategic” and describe China as a “strategic partner,”
“a label much desired by Beijing,”
10
China’s Assertive Response to Obama’s Positive Engagement
while Bush’s security dialogue with China was
called “Senior” to save “strategic” for US allies. Because the focus on shared interests
was more or less in line with China’s call for building a harmonious world to avoid the
clash of civilizations, the Obama administration took off ground with a short period of
honeymoon in relationship with China.
The honeymoon, however, was short bcause Obam’s approach raised expectations
for a unprecedented level of of partnership that cannot be met.  While some American
strategists introduced the ideas such as the "G-2" that saw the world as a bipolar affair
with America and China the only two that matter and the Chimeria in which the two
economies are interwinced to address all international economic issues, many Chinese
                                             
9 No author, “Not So Obvious, The secretary of state underestimates the power of her
words,” Washington Post, February 24, 2009, P. A12
10 Timothy Garton Ash, “Two ways for West to meet China,” The Straits Times,
November 20, 2009,
http://www.straitstimes.com/Review/Others/STIStory_456690.html?sunwMethod=GET7
perceived Obama’s policy as a sign of the US weakness and expected the US heavily in
debt to China during the financial meltdown to make more concessions to the largest
holder of US government debt. While the Obama administration worked assiduously in
its first year to put the US-China relationship on solid footing and lay the groundwork for
cooperation on major global challenges, it soon found itself responding to a series of
increasingly assertive Chinese moves. It seemed that Beijing was not only unwilling to
joint the Obama administration to takle the global issues but also asserting “its interests
— and its willingness to prevail, even at the expense of appearing the villain.”
11
Chinese leaders are in essense realists. Their making of Chinese foreign policy
often start from an assessment of liliang duibi (balance of forces) in the world, a Chinese
term similar to the conception of distribution of power in Western literature on
international relations. Carefully examining China’s relative power position and the
changing alignment and grouping of political forces, Chinese leaders make and adjust
their foreign policy accordingly. For many years after the end of the Cold War,
conditioned by China’s limited strength and geostrategic position, Chinese leadership
followed a taoguang yanghui policy to keep low profile and concentrate on building up
its national strength. In relations with the US, China tried to “learning to live with the
hegemon,” making adaptation and policy adjustment to the reality of the US dominance
in the international system.
12
China’s perception of the power distribution, however, began to change after the
financial meltdown started in the US and swept quickly across the globe in late 2008.
While major Western economies plummet, Chinese economy rebounded quickly and
strongly. Maintaining about 10% growth rate, China surpassed Germany as the world
largest exporter with total foreign trade of US$1.2 trillion in 2009 and overtook Japan as
Chinese leaders, therefore, avoided taking confrontational
posture in response to the US sanctions after Tiananmen in 1989, the US inadvertent
bombing of the Chinese embassy in 1999, and the mid-air collision between a Chinese jet
fighter and US EP-3 surveillance plane in 2001.
                                             
11 Andrew Small, “Dealing with a More Assertive China,” GMF blog, February 2, 2010,
http://blog.gmfus.org/2010/02/08/dealing-with-a-more-assertive-china/
12
Jia Qingguo, “Learning to Live with the Hegemon: Evolution of China’s Policy
toward the US since the End of the Cold War,” Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 14,
no. 44, August 2005, p. 395. 8
the world's second-largest economy with an 10.2 percent growth rate in 2010. China has
therefore made tremendous strides forward in terms of national strength and narrowed the
gap with the US. A Chinese scholar indicated that while China’s GDP was about
US$1,400 billion in 2003, accounting only 1/8 of America’s $10,900 trillion, it increased
rapidly to $4,909 billion, accounting 1/3 of America’s US$14,000 billion in 2009.
13
Many Chinese believed that this represented a trend of the shift in the world balance of
power to China’s favor. A Chinese scholar even claimed that “the global financial crisis
damaged the United States’ financial position. US economic recovery depends on rapid
economic growth in China and cooperation from Beijing."
14
With the US in financial turmoil seemingly desperate for cash-rich China to come
to its aid, the Chinese leaders became growingly confident in its ability to deal with the
US and forcefully safeguarding China’s national interests rather than compromise them.
A perception of a troubled US still attempting to keep China down, in this case, made
Chinese leaders less willing to make adaptations to the Obama administration. Although
President Obama went out of his way to show his goodwill by delaying arms sales to
Taiwan and meeting with the Dalai Lama in advance of his first trip to China in
November 2009, China still stage-managed President Obama's trip in a heavy-handed
way. His town hall meeting with young Chinese in Shanghai was not broadcast-live
nationwide. At his joint press conference with President Hu, no questions were allowed
from the audience. The state visit, therefore, marked the beginning of a downward spiral
in the relationship between the Obama administration and Beijing because “on trade,
currency, Iran, climate change and human rights, Mr Obama failed to win so much as an
inch of ground from his hosts.”
15
Then it came to the fiasco at the climate change summit in Copenhagen in
December 2009. Taking a leadership role of developing countries, China proposed the
                                             
13 Wang Jisi, “a strategic trial of strength between the US and China is inevitable,”
August 10, 2010, http://www.chinaelections.org/NewsInfo.asp?NewsID=184308.
14 Jin Canrong, “Reason for optimism in Sino-American relations,” East Asia Forum,
February 14th, 2010, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/02/14/reason-for-optimism-insino-american-relations/
15 Peter Foster, “Barack Obama visit signals new era of US-China relations,” Daily
Telegraph, November 21, 2009.9
principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" to press the US and other
Western countries hard to detail deep quantified carbon reduction commitments as well
as their financial pledges to poorer nations while developing countries only needed to do
“what they can to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change in the
light of their national conditions.”
16
While the Obama administration’s failure to cooperate with China at the
Copenhagan climate change summit was another splash of cold water for the Obama
administration, China’s unsually strong response to his arms sale to Taiwan in January
2011 brought the Obama-Beijing relationship to a new low point. The Taiwan issue is
one of China’s so-called core interests. Although Chinese are still in debate about what
are China’s core interests, State Councilor Dai Binguo told Americans at the first ChinaUS Strategic & Economic Dialogue in July 2009 that China’s number one core interest is
to maintain its fundamental system and state security, next is state sovereignty and
territorial integrity, and third is the continued stable development of the economy and
society.
China dispatched a Vice Foreign Minister to
represent Premier Wen at an event for the heads of state, sitting opposite to President
Obama and fighting strenuously against fixed targets for emission cuts in the developing
world. President Obama later had to track down Wen at a conference room where the
leaders of China, Brazil, South Africa, and India were at meeting. For many years, while
China claimed a member of developing countries, it avoided taking a lead to confront the
Western powers. Beijing’s position at the summit changed this practice.
17
arms sales
Showing determination in defending its core interests, China ratcheted up the
rhetoric in its warnings about the consequences of the routine and predictable
to Taiwan as a serious challenge to China’s core interest. When the Obama
administration announced the sale of Patriot III missiles on January 6, 2010, Chinese
foreign and security policy analysts openly warned about sanctioning the US firms to
                                             
16 “Foreign Minister: communication with other developing countries at Copenhagen
summit,” Xinhua, December, 18, 2009
17 No author, “Every issue was discussed except going to moon at the first China-US
Economic Dialogue”, Xinhua, July 28, 2009,
http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/news/2009/07-29/1794984.shtml. 10
“reshape the policy choices of the US.”
18 After the Obama administration ignored
Beijing’s warning and continued the decades-long policy by notifying the Congress of its
$6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan on January 29, the Obama administration was met with
unprecedented Chinese objections. In addition to announcing the immediate suspension
of some military exchanges with the US and unleashing a storm of bluster by various
government and military agencies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman threatened to
impose sanctions for the first time on American companies involved in the arms sales.
19
China’s angry reactions reflected the frustration among many Chinese over the
perceived US intention to prevent from China rising to its rightful place. Seeing a
structural conflict between China as a rising power and the US as the sole superpower,
they believe that the US would never give up the policy of containing China. A
commentary in the People's Daily with the title, “Is U.S. ready for China to take the stage
as a world power?" stated that “it is easy for the US to say but difficult to take action to
adapt to China’s rise. If the US cannot find a way to recognize and accept China as a
world power, Sino-US relations would continue ups-and-downs like roller coaster.”
China thus reversed its position from a target of US sanctions to targeting sanctions
against US companies.
20
With high expectations over Obama’s positive engagement based on shared interests
during the first months of his presidency, Chinese leaders were frustrated at the end of the
year by “the rigid US position” that “does not reflect the nature of the new Sino-US
symbiosis and fails to recognize Beijing’s growing international clout.”
21
                                             
18 No author, “China yesterday urged the United States to cancel a massive arms deal to
Taiwan, warning of severe consequences if it does not heed the call,” China Daily,
January 8, 2010.
Although
President Obama never promised to end U.S. support of Taiwan's defense or stop meeting
with the Dalai Lama, Beijing found an inconsistency between the Obama’s words and
19 No author, “Chinese threats to sanction Boeing are more sound than fury,” Chinese
Economic Review, February 3, 2010,  http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/today-inchina/2010_02_03/Dont_worry_about_Boeing.html
20 Zhongsheng, “Is U.S. ready for China to take the take the stage as a world power?”
People’s Daily, July 29, 2010, p. 3.
21 Zhu Feng, “A return of Chinese Pragmatism,” PacNet, #16, April 5, 201011
deeds and felt betrayed when President Obama announced the arms sales to Taiwan and
met with the Dalai Lama in early 2010.
Becoming more assertive on the Taiwan issue, China also grew increasingly vocal
in protesting and pushing back U.S. naval operations in international waters off its coast.
Assistant Minister of Chinese Foreign Affairs Cui Tiankai told two senior U.S. officials
in March 2010 that China now viewed its claims to the South China Sea, an international
waterway through which more than 50 percent of the world's merchant fleet tonnage
passes each year, as its core interests, on par with its claims to Tibet and Taiwan.
22
Although this claimed cannot be confirmed by the Chinese government, A Xinhua News
Commentary said that “By adding the South China Sea to its core interest, China has
showed its determination to secure its maritime resources and strategic waters.”
23 As a
matter of fact, before this announcemnt, a group of Chinese vessels already intercepted
an American surveillance ship, the USSN Impeccable, in March 2009 in the South China
Sea where the American navy had frequently deployed to monitor China’s military
activities. According to a Chinese scholar, the incident “is a sign of new robustness in
China’s dealing with the West.”24
                                             
22 John Pomfret, “U.S. takes a tougher tone with China,” Washington Post, July 30,
2010,  A1.
Rejecting the results of an international investigation
that showed the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan was a torpedo attack by a
North Korean submarine on the March 26, Beijing took an unusually assertive position
against the joint US-South Korean military exercise that was to deter North Korea from
further provoction in the summer 2010. Beijing specifically objected the USS George
Washington aircraft carrier to be deployed in the Yellow Sea, an area which Chinese
experts warned would place the Chinese capital within the carrier's striking distance
although the U.S. navy has long conducted naval exercises in the areas. Between early
June when the news was revealed and early July when Washington confirmed the
exercises, the spokesman at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued six official
protests with a successively tougher tone from calling on involved parties to "maintain
23 No author, “Modernizing navy for self-defense,” Xinhua, July 13, 2010.
24 James Mikes, “China and the West, A time for Muscle-flexing,” The Economist,
March 19, 2009.12
calm and constraint", to expressing "concern" and "serious concern", then morphing into
words such as "oppose" and "strongly oppose."
25
President Obama’s Adjustment of US Policy toward China
While President Obama ignored his republican critiques that his positive
engagement was appeasement to accommodate China and undermine the realist “balanceof-power logic,”
26 China’s unusually assertive behavior forced the administration to
adjust its China policy. No longer focusing on “being not Bush,” the Obama
administration began to “shedding that self-imposed straitjacket and pursuing traditional
American interests and principles even if George W. Bush pursued them, too.”
27
The most important adjustment was to bring back the “hedge” strategy by
stepping up engagement with allies and partners sharing America's values and interests
and wielding American leadership in Asia after the relative neglect of the region under
President G. W. Bush. An increasingly assertive China made the rebalancing action
relatively easy because China’s heavy-handed behaviour not only alienated the Obama
administration but also damaged its relations with many of its neighbors who are afraid of
that Beijing as the regional hegemon with a hierarchical vision of regional order would
convert its economic weight into lopsided diplomatic and military advantage against their
national interests.
In Southeast Asia, despite impressive diplomacy over the past decade, China’s
recent push in its sovereignty claim over the disputed territories in the South China Sea
resulted in widespread suspicion among many countries in the region that a rising China
will move on these contested claims when its political leverage is much more formidable.
                                             
25 Cary Huang, “PLA ramped up China's stand on US-Korea drill: Beijing rhetoric
evolves from neutral to shrill sabre-rattling,” South China Morning Post, August 6, 2010,
http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a
0/?vgnextoid=8018423df234a210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=China&s=News
26 Michael J. Green, “A teachable moment for Pyongyang and Beijing?” Foreign Policy, July 15,
2010,
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/15/a_teachable_moment_for_pyongyang
_and_beijing
27 Robert Kagan, “America: Once engaged, now ready to lead,” Washington Post,
October 1, 2010,  A19,  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093005528.html?wpisrc=nl_pmopinions13
The reported statement that its claims in these territories are part of China’s core interests
made its neighbors nervous. “It was a chilling reminder to the region that a dominant
China might well behave differently than a territorially distant and democratic power
such as the United States.”
28
withholding shipments of rareearth minerals
China’s relationship with Japan was always in trouble. In
September 2010, Beijing demand for an apology and its
as a punishment after Japan detained a Chinese trawler captain whose boat
collided with a Japanese Coast Guard vessel near the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands
led to a crisis in the relationship and put US friction with Japan over issues like Futenma
on the back burner. South Korea was also deeply frustrated with China’s tolerance over
North Korean belligerence during the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong crises in 2010.  The
ruptures pushed Seoul to build closer military relationship with the US.
As the tensions between China and its neighbors are increasing, many Asian
nations have looked for ways to hedge against China’s rise and looked at the United
States’ leadership in the region with more positive eyes as as the preeminent security
provider in Asia. The US therefore gained favorable attentions and attitudes even from
former enemies like Vietnam and estranged friends like the Philippines and Indonesia and
strengthened ties with its key regional allies of Japan and South Korea. Taking heart that
countries throughout Asia were welcoming the U.S. to increase its presence and activities
in the region, “the Obama administration adjusted and spent much of 2010 reminding
Beijing of the depths of U.S. strategic power and influence in Asia, as countries from
India to Vietnam and Japan sought closer security ties with Washington to re-establish a
stable strategic equilibrium vis-à-vis Beijing.”  As a result, “a much more hardheaded
appreciation of the underlying power realities of dealing with Beijing” replaced “the
administration's earlier dreamy visions of transformational U.S.-China cooperation on
global issues.”29
To make it clear that U.S. would not allow China to dictate its activities in
international waters, the Obama administration waded into the territorial disputes over the
                                             
28 John Lee, “The end of the charm offensive,” Foreign Policy, October 26, 2010.
29 Michael J. Green, “Good news and bad news about U.S.-China relations,” Foreign
Policy,  January 13, 2011,
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/13/good_news_and_bad_news_about_us
_china_relations14
South China Sea and clarified its position at the annual ASEAN Regional Forum in
Hanoi on July 23, 2010. While Washington still took no side in the territorial disputes of
the South China Sea, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “freedom of
navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons and respect for international law in
the South China Sea” are U.S. national interest. She also offered to help foster
multilateral negotiations as a US “leading diplomatic priority.” It was significant that the
remarks were made in Vietnam, a country that has long-time territorial dispute with
China over Spratly and Paracel archipelagoes and was seeking to exploit its turn as
ASEAN chairman to keep the South China Sea dispute on the boil. From this perspective,
a reporter suggested that “the US ambushed China in its backyard.”
30 While it is
arguable if the US ambushed China, Beijing reacted furiously to Secretary Clinton’s
statement. The Chinese foreign minister issued a statement charging the U.S.
internationalization of the disputes in the South China Sea and Secretary Clinton’s
remarks as an attack on China. China's defense spokesperson also made an official
response to “oppose the South China Sea issue being internationalized" and reiterated
that China "has indisputable sovereignty over islands in the South China Sea and the
surrounding waters."
31
In spite of the strong reaction from Beijing, Secretary Clinton’s statement clearly
marked a shift in the Obama administration’s approach to engage China and significantly
raised Washington's direct involvement in the South China Sea, a core interest issue for
China. In this case, even the critique of the Obama administration’s China policy
acknowledged that Clinton’s “Comments on territorial disputes in the South China Sea
mark a welcome new realism from the Obama administration.”32
Secretary Clinton's statements in Hanoi were followed by her confirmation to
Japanese Foreign Minister that the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands administered by Japan and
claimed by China were covered by Article 5 of the Japan- U.S. security treaty amid rising
                                             
30 Greg Torode, “How the US ambushed China in its backyard,” South China Morning
Post, July 25, 2010.
31 Cheng Guangjin and Wu Jiao, “Sovereign waters are not in question,” China Daily,
August 31, 2010, http://www.cdeclips.com/en/nation/fullstory.html?id=48815
32 Dan Blumenthal, “Reining in China’s Ambitions,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2010,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703700904575391862120429050.html.15
tension between Japan and China over the islands in late September. The article
authorizes the U.S. to protect Japan in the event of an armed attack "in the territories
under the administration of Japan."
33
The US leadership was appreciated by the ASEAN member states. The US scored
big when invited by ASEAN to attend the sixth annual East Asian Summit on October
30, 2010 as a full member. Accepting the invitation, the US set an ambitious goal for the
EAS to develop “into a foundational security and political institution for the region,
capable of resolving disputes and preventing them before they arise.” This goal is bound
to concern China, which opposed similar efforts to introduce preventive diplomacy and
conflict resolution through the ASEAN Regional Forum a decade ago.
  Taking advantage of the territorial disputes
between China and its neighbors, the Obama administration thus reasserted itself
forcefully in regional diplomacy and security. President Obama started an annual U.S.-
ASEAN Leaders Meeting in 2009. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also chalked up
perfect attendance at the ASEAN Regional Forum during her tenure. Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates was the first defense minister to sign up for the inaugural ASEAN
Defense Minister Plus Eight (ADMM+) meeting in 2010.
34 On her way to
Asia to attend the EAS, Secretary Clinton stopped by Hawaii and made a major policy
speech that reiterated the US commitment to the resources and attention necessary to
maintain US leadership in Asia for the long term, despite two ongoing wars and
economic downturn. This was her second visit to the region in four months and the sixth
trip to Asia as Secretary of State. The trip took her to seven countries: Vietnam,
Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Australia. “During the
course of that tour she has urged some countries to stand up to China's growing
influence.”35
                                             
33 No author, “Clinton tells Maehara Senkaku subject to Japan-U.S. security pact,”
Associate Press, September 23, 2010,
The warm welcome to Hillary Clinton on her swing through Asia showed
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9IDOG4O0
34 Amitav Acharya, “Asia in the New American Moment,” PcNet, #49, October 14,
2010.
35 James Hookway and Yayu Yuniar, “In Southeast Asia, Democrats' Losses Prompt
Worries,” Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2010,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870350690 4575592054289970606.html16
that “southeast Asians are more than happy to hang on to Pax Americana for a bit longer,
out of fear of China.”
36
While Secretary Clinton was still in Asia, President Obama made a tour of four
major Asian democracies--Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and India--on November 5-14.
While the visit to New Delhi was to “bring about an equilibrium in power politics in the
Asia-Pacific” to balance China’s power,
37
the visits to Seoul and Tokyo targeted to
revigorate the long time US alliances with Japan and South Korea. After this trip, instead
of ending military exercises in the Yellow See as China demanded, the Obama
administration sent the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea following the North
Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong that killed two South Korean soldiers and two civilians
in late November. The next month, a trilateral meeting among the foreign ministers of the
US, Japan and South Korea was held in Washington for the first time despite a history of
animosity between Seoul and Tokyo. “A landmark trilateral meeting between three strong
partners” as Secretary Clinton declared ,38
it was a remarkable show of solidarity
between the US and its two major Asia democratic allies. “Although the three stopped
short of explicitly criticizing China’s refusal to fully pressure its ally in Pyongyang,” The
trilateralism provided “a longer-term hedge against a reemerging China.”
39
These ajustments marked the return of the Obama administration to the centralist
engagement policy successfully held by his predecessors. Acknowledging China's
emergence as a world power and holding the biggest strategic and economic dialogues
with Chinese, the Obama administration laid down markers when China's behavior

                                             
36 Ian Buruma, “China's recent thuggish behaviour is changing Asian opinions,”
Guardian, November 7, 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/07/china-foreign-relationsdiplomacy
37 Ajaya Kumar Das, “Obama’s India Visit:In Search of a New Equilibrium,” AJISSCommentary, No. 150, November 18, 2010,
http://www.rsis.edu.sg/publications/Perspective/RSIS1502010.pdf
38 Hillary Clinton, “Remarks with Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and South
Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan,” December 6, 2010,
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/12/152443.htm
39 Patrick M. Cronin, “Testing Trilaterism: US faciliated trilaterism hedge,” PacNet, #59,
December 7, 2010.17
infringes on U.S. interests. It is interesting to see that the joint statement released during
President Hu Jintao’s state visit to the United States in January 2011 did not make any
reference to "respecting each other's core interests" or to its importance in ensuring
steady progress in U.S.-China relations. The term "core interests" did not appear
anywhere in the statement. As one observer suggested, “American willingness in 2009 to
accommodate China and the unwillingness to do so” in 2010 “indicates that Washington
is more realistic today about the kind of cooperation that it can expect from China.”
40
The Policy Adjustment and Transformation of the US-China Relations
While the failure of President Obama to convince Beijing to embrace his positive
engagement was the precipitating cause, the Obama adminstration’s China policy
adjustment also reflected the US axiety over the transformation of the US-China relations
in the 21
st
century. An ancient empire, China was one of the most powerful nations in the
world before the Industrial Revolution that gave rise to Western powers. Accounting for
about one third of the world output as recently as the early 19
th
century, China’s share of
the global output began a steady decline in the twentieth century when it plunged into
chaos involving war, famine, isolation, and revolution. This was opposite to the rise of
the US, which accounted for only about 1-2 percent of world output in the early 19
th
century but shot up to about 20 percent in the twentieth century. Now, China has
reemerged from a dark cocoon of decline and isolation into the light of international
recognition as a great power in the 21
st
century and may ultimately match the US power
in foreseable future.
The rise of China has transformed Sino-US relations. For about a century before
China’s reemergence, the US either engaged or confronted China for various purposes;
but it always regarded China as secondary significant, important simply in the context of
rivalry with other powers, such as with imperial Japan during the Pacific War and with
the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As China steadily stepped up as a rising power in
the 21
st
century to serve as a counterweight to US influence in Asia and other regions, the
bilateral relationship has become increasingly strategic and globally significant.
Consequently, policy makers in Washington have to redefine US relations with a rising
                                             
40 Frank Ching, “Hedging the glad hand to China,” Japan Times, February 7, 2011,
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20110207fc.html18
China. The US, for the first time, has to deal with China for its own sake. The US-China
relationship has never been easy. Harry Harding called it a “fragile relationship” in the
1980s and Mike Lampton used “same bed different dreams” to characterize it in the
1990s. This relationship has become more complicated in the 21
st
century. In addition to
often-sharp differences over many bilateral issues, such as trade, human rights and
Taiwan, suspicions of each other’s long-term intentions has come to overshadow the
minds of political elites in both countries. While many Chinese became concerned that
the US might try to keep China down, some Americans are anxious about the
implications of China’s great power aspiration for the US preeminence the world and the
Asia-Pacific region.
In the past, although the PRC once behaviored as a revolutionary state, it was
weak and isolated and, therefore, unable to pose serious challenges to the US interests at
a global scale. China’s rise has posed strategic challenges to the US in many parts of the
world. For example, China’s rapid economic growth has brought it to an unprecedent
shortage of resources, espcially energy. The US is alarmed to see China going around the
globe in search of raw materials and trying to lock up energy supplies, including pursuing
deals with countries under US sanctions or with US security concerns. This development
has raised concerns among some Americans that China is not only challenging the United
States' historic dominance in many parts of the world but also undermining its efforts to
promote transparency and human rights, damaging US interests and values. In the Asia
Pacific region, a Middle Kingdom before the 19
th
century, China’s re-emergence as a
great power has raised the question about if it would seek to restore the position of
ancient dominance and develop a sphere of influence over its periphery for greater
security. Should China’s capacities enable Beijing to pursue a regional dominance, it
would heighten US-China conflict because China would challenge US strategic
relationships with its East Asian allies and diminish US strategic presence.
In spite of theoretical equality and anarchy in the nation-state system, a
hierarchical structure exists among states. But “this global hierarchy is constantly in flux,
reflecting variations in relative power driven by differential nation-state state growth 19
rates and movements of capital and resources across frontiers.”
41
Although China is still far from reaching the position of power parity with the US,
China’s rise has changed the US strategic thinking of China from "a weak China" to "a
strong China" and from "the theory of a crumbling China" into "the theory of a rising
China.”
Hegemonic states
commend dominant positions over other states, resting on a robust economic base and
military capabilities, supplemented and solidified by normative power. The hegemonic
states, therefore, have vested interests to maintain the status quo as their values and
interests are universalized to the point where they largely conform to the rules, values,
and institutions of the international system. Rising powers, however, often become
challengers to the system, demanding a change in the power hierarchy. Historically, the
rise of great powers was often associated with power transition from a dominant state to a
challenger, which often caused disruptive conflicts and even large-scale wars. During the
twentieth century, except the competition between the United States and the United
Kingdom that resulted in a more or less peaceful power transition from a hegemonic Pax
Britannica to a Pax Americana, all other great power competitions were violent and
disruptive.
42
One is the lack of transparency on China’s rapid military modernization program.
China has strived to modernize its military forces along with its economic moderinzation
but has not told the world about how far it has gone and will go in its military
modernization and what is its grand strategy. One question that has concerned some in
the US is if China will seek to become the leading military power and challenge the US
predominance. In response, the US has to carefully monitor China’s military
modernization programs. While the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act required
the Secretary of Defense submit an annual report on the development of Chinese military
While many Americans have become wondering how China as a great power
will use its influences in global and regional affairs, the following three developments
inside China have exacerbated their sense of anxiety about a China threat.
                                             
41 Ronald I. Tammen, “The Impact of Asia on World Politics: China and India Options
for the United States,” International Studies Review, vol. 8, issue 4, December 2006, p.
564.
42 David M. Lampton, “Paradigm Lost: The Demise of ‘weak China’,“, National Interest,
Fall 2005, pp. 67-74.20
power and strategy to the US Congress, the Pentagon’s first Quadrennial Defense Report
(QDR), a geopolitical blueprint issued right after the September 11, 2001, took a
capacity-based approach to define enemies and found that “(a) military competitor with a
formidable resource will emerge in the region” and became the long-term threat to the
US. Although the report did not mention the name of China, everyone knew the
identification.
43 The next QDR in 2006 stated explicitly that “Of the major and emerging
powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and
field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military
advantages absent U.S. counter strategies.” It also added that ”Secrecy envelops most
aspects of Chinese security affairs. The outside world has little knowledge of Chinese
motivations and decision-making or of key capabilities supporting its military
modernization.”
44 The 2010 QDR further stated that “China’s rapid development of
global economic power and political influence, combined with an equally rapid
expansion of military capabilities, is one of the central and defining elements of the
strategic landscape in the Asian region and, increasingly, global security affairs... The
United States welcomes the rise of a strong, prosperous, and successful China that plays a
greater role in world affairs. However, that future is not fixed, and while the United
States will seek to maximize positive outcomes and the common benefits that can accrue
from cooperation, prudence requires that the United States balance against the possibility
that cooperative approaches may fail to prevent disruptive competition and conflict.” It
again pointed out that “The limited transparency of China’s military modernization – in
terms of its capabilities, intentions, and investments – remains a source of growing
concern in the region, which increases the potential for misunderstanding and
miscalculation.” 45
The second development is that China's great power aspirations is supported by
rising popular nationalism harbored on the victim conviction of a "century of shame and
                                             
43 US Departmnet of Defence, Quadrennial Defense Report, September 30, 2001,
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr2001.pdf
44 US Departmnet of Defence, Quadrennial Defense Report, February 6, 2006, p. 29,
http://www.qr.hq.af.mil/pdf/2006%20QDR%20Report.pdf
45 US Departmnet of Defence, Quadrennial Defense Report, February 1, 2010,
http://www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf. 21
humiliation" in the hands of imperialist powers. In this case, while relatively minor
incidents such America’s accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in
1999 and China’s capture of an American spy plane in 2001 provoked massive antiAmerican demonstrations,
46 a strong sense of wounded national pride burst violently
when huge crowds gathered in many Chinese cities and Chinese nationals gathered all
over the world to protest what they believed the “anti-China forces” in the West during
the Olympic torch relay in 2008. Popular nationalism ran particular high when the global
economy sputtered in 2008-09 because a battered West presented a gratifying target for
pent-up contempt. A popular book, China is Not Happy claimed that the financial crisis
could result in an envious West doing whatever it can to keep China down. Relations
between the West and China reached to a critical point, whereby a showdown was
anticipated.
47 The book sold half a million copies in a few months after its release in
early 2009, not counting bootleg copies and online piracy, and immediately shot to the
top of the bestsellers list.
48 Another popular book found that China was encircled in a Cshape by wary countries beholden to the US and could not escape the calamity of war in
the not-too-distant future. Because the US put a fire in China's backyard, China should
light a fire in the US backyard.
49 Still another popular book, The China Dream, called
for China to abandon modest foreign policy and build the world's strongest military to
deter the wary US from challenging China's rise while the West was still mired in an
economic slowdown.
50
                                             
46 Suisheng Zhao, “China’s Pragmatic Nationalism: Is It Manageable?” Washington
Quarterly, Winter 2005-06, pp. 131-144.
Observing this development, one American scholar found that
“Since the start of the 2008-09 financial crisis many Chinese strategists have reached the
conclusion that the United States is declining, and their own country is rising much faster
47 Song Xiaojun, Wang Xiaodong, Huang Jisu, Song Qiang, etc, Zhongguo Bugaoxing
(China is Not Happy), Nanjing: Jiangsu Renmin Chuban She, 2009.
48 Raymond Zhou, “Why is China angry?” China Daily, April 24, 2009.
49戴旭 (Dai Xu), C 形包围——内忧外患下的中国突围 (C shape encircle, China’s
Breakthrough with the internal conerns and external dangers), Beijing, Wenhui
Chubanshe, 2009.
50刘明福, (Liu Mingfu), 中国梦 (The China Dream), Beijing: Youyi Chuban Gongshi,
2010.22
than had previously been expected. Belief that this is the case has fed an already powerful
strain of forceful, sometimes belligerent nationalism that appears to be increasingly
widespread, especially among the young.”
51
The third development is China’s reluctant to open up domestic political
competition and build a liberal democracy. Although realism is an important tradition in
US foreign policy, Americans have a deep convictions about the superiority of
democracy over other forms of government and therefore are deeply suspicious about
China’s authoritarian system for two reasons. First, China’s rapidly economic growth
under the authoritarian government has become the “biggest potential ideological
competitor to liberal democratic capitalism,”
A rising China driven by this type of
nationalist sentiments could become irrational and inflexible rather peaceful.
52 because “what China has achieved in the
last couple of decades legitimately lays siege to many of our most deeply held notions
about the realities of government and economics.”53
Because of these anxieties about the implications of China’s rise as a great power
in the 21
st
century, it was painfully
Second, many Americans are
convined that democracy is a better answer to many of the China’s problems than
authoritarianism because authoritarian governments are more prone to plunge into wars
than democracies. A combination of China’s authoritarian state and a market economy
has produced a corruptive crony capitalism in which power and money forges an alliance
to infringe on ordinary people's rights and cause deep discontents among the society,
moving China toward one after another crisis with the numerous unrests and protests in a
period of deepening social tensions. In this case, the Chinese leadership could tempt to
blaim foreign interference and seek foreign conflicts to divert attention from domestic
problems.
clear soon after Presient Obama entered office that
                                             
51 Aaron Friedberg, “The Coming Clash With China,” Washington Street Journal,
January 17, 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704323204576085013620618774.html?
KEYWORDS=aaron+friedberg
52 Timothy Garton Ash, “China, Russia and the new world disorder,” the Los Angeles
Times, September 11, 2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ash11-
2008sep11,0,5312908.story.
53 Howard W. French, “A China Model, What if Beijing is Right?” International Herald
Tribune, November. 2, 2007.23
“mismatched interests, values, and capabilities make it difficult for Washington and
Beijing to work together to address global challenges.”
54 The hope for the nebulous G-2
world was very short-lived as the US-China great power politics prevented it from
becoming reality. After the state visit by President Obama to China in November 2009, a
growing list of grievances over China, such as the value of China’s currency, the Google
and cyber attacks, arms to Taiwan, human rights in Tibet, carbon emissions, military
spending, sanctions on Iran, and North Korea, all made headlines in the US media. With
many Americans seized by anxiety about the country’s difficult economic future and high
unemployment during the recession, China became an easy punching bag to be blamed
for all that ailed the US. “In Washington’s poisonous political climate, opportunists from
both left and right” could easily “cast engagement with China as appeasement.”
55 As a
result, during the midle term election of 2010, candidates from both political parties
suddenly found China a ready villain to run against. As one news story told, within just
one week in October 2010, “at least 29 candidates have unveiled advertisements
suggesting that their opponents have been too sympathetic to China and, as a result,
Americans have suffered.”56
China’s increasing assertiveness at the time certainly helped these ads to play up
Americans’ unease with the threat posed by a rising China and complicate the already
fraught relationship between the encumbent superpower and its rising power challenger.
Not only were many Americans worried about the future of the US preeminence in the
world, they were concerned if China was going to dominate the world in the years ahead.
Martin Jacques’s book with an alarming title, When China Rules the World: the End of
the Western World and the Birth of a New World Order, was published in June 2009 and
quickly became one of best sellers during the period of global financial meltdown. In
                                             
54 Elizabeth Economy, Adam Segal, “Time to Defriend China,” Foreign Policy, May 24,
2010,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/24/time_to_defriend_china?page=0,0
55 Ian Bremmer, “Gathering Storm: America and China in 2020,” World Affairs,
July/August 2010, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/articles/2010-JulyAugust/fullBremmer-JA-2010.html
56 David W. Chen, “China Emerges as a Scapegoat in Campaign Ads,” New York Times,
October 9, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/us/politics/10outsource.html24
spite of the partisan gridlog in US Congress, anger over China’s currency became one of
the few areas of bipartisan agreement, culminating in the House’s overwhelming vote in
September 2010 to threaten China with tariffs on its exports if Beijing did not let its
currency appreciate. This development set the tage for the Obama administration to
adjust its China policy.
A Centralist Approach to Engage China
While the Obama administration’s policy adjustment was interpreted by some
people in both the US and China as a move toward the direction of containing China, it
was simply a return to the centralist engagement policy that has at the core of the US
policy toward China for several decades. Every new US president who swung his China
policy toward one or other extreme has always had to adjust the policy shortly after the
beginning of the presidency. In contrast to his predecessors who started with tough
positions toward China and adjusted their positions toward more cooperative direction,
President Obama has gone the other way around. Starting with a reconcilitary tone, he
was scaled back and took a tougher position. But this turn was not a move toward the
containment strategy.
Containment has been one extreme in the US policy debate about how to respond
to the China’s great power aspirations . It sees the rising economic and military power of
China by its own accord a threat to the US in as a zero-sum game because a rising China
would want to define its interests more expansively, seek a greater degree of influence,
become more ambitious, increase its sense of entitlement, and lessen its tolerance to
obstacles. Fulfilling its expected potential, China will join a select group of great powers,
including Great Britain in the nineteenth century, Germany and Japan during World War
II, and the Soviet Union and the United States in the Cold War, to expand its influence
and pursued some form of hegemony even by launching warfare against its rivals.
Because China’s desire to assert itself springs from a natural appetite, “the very fact of
China's rising economic and military power will exacerbate U.S.-Chinese tensions in the
years ahead.”
57
                                             
57 Robert D. Kaplan, “The Geography of Chinese Power,” New York Times, April 19,
2010,
A rising China would engage an intense security competition with the
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/opinion/20ihtedkaplan.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss25
US to maximize its share of world power and consequently upset the balance of power
and spark realignments in East Asia as well as the world. Most of China's neighbors and
other powers will have to made a decision about whether to join the US or China in the
new round of power competition. In this case, China’s rise will inevitably challenge the
US interests in Asia and other parts of the world, raising the specter of great power
rivalry in the world. Because China’s rise will be fraught with tensions with the US, the
US has to contain or at least delay China's rise to preserve American preponderance.
Contrast to containment in an oversimplified scketch of China policy debate is the
liberal view that sees the world politics as a non-zero-sum game because the current
international system built under the leadership of the US after World War II is around
rules and norms of nondiscrimination and market openness, creating conditions for rising
states to advance their expanding economic and political goals within it. In this system,
“the rise of China dose not has to trigger a wrenching hegemonic transition.”58
Benefiting enormously from the international political and economic system, “China’s
development is shaped by the international system.”
59
                                             
58 G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West , Can the Liberal
System Survive?” Foreign Affairs , January/February 2008.
China’s increasing integration
into the international system, evident in its growing memberships in international security
regimes and economic organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), has
created constraints on its foreign conduct as well as incentives to adapt to the prevailing
norms in contemporary international relations. In this case, China’s re-emergence as a
global power would provide opportunities for expanding US-China cooperation in a
period of rapid globalization and growing strategic interdependence that has increased the
common stakes for China and the U.S. and become a positive force to integrate China
into the established international system in which economic self-interests and growing
networks of international involvement will impose their own constraints on China and
help ensure its emergence to be a responsible stakeholder. China’s search for a greater
role in world affairs, in this case, will not necessarily threaten US interests. “Fortified by
59 Zhiqun Zhu, US-China Relations in the 21
st
Century: Power Transition and Peace,
London: Routledge, 2006, p.173.26
both globalization and its economic policies, China has thus become an ardent supporter
of the existing international economic order.”
60
Reflecting on this policy debeate, the US policy toward China has come through
swings toward one or the other end. Each of the three US presidents since the end of the
Cold War have struggled to define his stance on the critical long-term issue facing the
United States: whether to view China as a strategic threat to contain it or to see it as a
strategic opportunity to engage it in shaping the future of international system. While
both Presidents Bill Clinton and G. W. Bush started from leaning toward a containment
direction, President Obama started leaning toward a liberal engagement policy. Neither
approach alone worked well to serve the US interests and they all eventually moved
toward a central position to strikes a balance between conciliation and confrontation.
With an intellectual root in realism, the centralist approach, known also as conservative
pragmatism,61
Disappointing over the pattern of more assertive Chinese rhetoric and behavior
during the global financial crisis, the Obama administration has to demonstrate the US
power and willingness to defend its national interests and work with its allies who looked
to America not just to engage but also to balance China’s rising power. However, the
Obama adinistration is not in the position to forge an anti-China coalition in concert with
is a pragmatic approach to incorporate China into the international system
as a responsible stackholder while taking a realpolitik and balance of power position to
hedge against the possibility that China behaves more of a typical, muscle-flexing rising
power. It was not a return to containment policy but to a more balanced policy based on
three pillars clearly expressed by President Obama’s Senior Director for Asian Affairs
Jeff Bader at a press briefing before Chinese President Hu’s state visit in January 2011:
1) broadening areas of cooperation with China; 2) strengthening relationships with
partners and allies to shape the context in which China’s emergence is occurring; and 3)
insisting that China abides by global norms and international law. Washington continues
to try to work with China on a broad range of issues where our interests overlap.
                                             
60 David, M. Lampton, “The Faces of Chinese Power,” Foreign Affairs, vo. 86, no. 1,
January/February 2007, p. 117.
61 Andrew Scobell, “Crouching Korea, Hidden China,: Bush Administration Policy
Toward Pyongyang and Beijing,” Asian Survey, 42:2, 2002, p. 346.27
China’s neighbors to contain China because a full-out confrontation against China would
be self-defeating and very few other countries would go along with it because the Obama
administration came to office at the jucture of the most important geo-political
development in the 21
st
century, i.e. the changing global distribution of power from a
short-lived US unipolar dominance to a multipolarity due to the rise of China and other
non-Western powers. As the January 2009 National Intelligence Council report stated,
“although the US is likely to remain the single most important actor, the US’s relative
strength will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained."
62  In this
multipolar world, it is unrealistic to contain China as a rising power. It is from this
perspective that Obama’s deputy secretary of state James Steinberg stated explicitly that
“history shows that actions by established powers to resist or contain rising powers often
contradict their stated purpose of preventing conflict, and cause what they are trying to
avert.” Therefore, "we have an especially compelling need to work with China."63
That was why when the relationship reached a critical low point in September
2010, President Obama sent a delegation to Beijing led by his two top personal aids,
Lawrence H. Summers, director of the National Economic Council and Thomas E.
Donilon, deputy national security adviser but to be named national security adviser, to
bring the relationship back on track. Beijing took a note from the US that the purpose of
the visit was "to send a clear message that the US is approaching its relations with China
strategically, with a view that integrates the full range of economic and security
concerns."
64
Conclusion
Both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao met with the delegation
and made positive responses to President Obama’s justure, agreeing to resume military to
military exchanges that was suspended after the US arms sale to Taiwan earlier that year.
                                             
62 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,
Washington DC, November 2008, www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
63 James B. Steinberg, “East Asia and the Pacific: Administration s Vision of the U.S.-
China Relationship,” Keynote Address at the Center for a New American Security
Washington, DC, September 24, 2009.
64 Wu Jiao and He Wei, “Visits to get Sino-US ties back on track,” China Daily,
September 7 2010, http://www.cdeclips.com/en/world/fullstory.html?id=5112928
Because positive engagement during the first year was no longer sufficent, the
Obama administration adjusted its policy by adding a realist hedge strategy to back the
positive engagement. Beijing’s realism was met with a realist turn in the second year of
Obama presidency. The tit-for-tat interaction resulted in increasing ups and downs and
the US-China relationship experienced the unusual double dips during the first two years
of the Obama administration. But both sides are accustomed to the rollercoaster and have
survived much worse instability. Inspite of the brinkmanship and the evelop pushing,
both sides have always tried to find a way to managing their differences peacefully as allout confrontation between the two great powers would have significant effects on the
global security and economy. Although the concept of G-2 amounting to strategic
bipolarity or a Sino-US condominium is a fantacy, it does shows the central importance
of Sino-US relations in the world affars. It was striking to see how carefully both sides
tried to stop further downward spiral and diffuse fears that cropped up on both sides in
late 2010. While the Chinese went to extraordinary lengths to tone down its rhetoric in
relations with the US before President Hu’s visit to the US in January 2011, the Obama
White House also took advantage of the summit to persuade the Chinese leadership that
US is not engaged in containment.
It is worth noting that China’s new assertive posture was rooted in an exaggerated
calculations of China’s strength in the global power balance. In response to President
Obama’s policy adjustment, the Chinese leaders have eventually returned to their sense
of pragmatism because as realists they ultimately respect the US strength and has to come
to the reality that China is still far from the postion to dislodge American power any time
soon. Even in the Asia-Pacific, China is still far to match American military and
economic pre-eminence that has underwriten peace and prosperity in the region for the
past several decades. In addition, Chinese leaders are fearful of their internal economic
and political fragility. China’s political stability and economic development could be
threatened if the rest of the world stands up to China’s increasing assertiveness and
foreign companies begin questioning their future in China. That was why China scaled
back from its overly assertive posture before President Hu’s state visit to Washington in
January 2011. China allowed the renminbi to appreciate 3.2 percent against the dollar;
urged North Korea not to retaliate or react to South Korea's December artillery exercises 29
on the island of Yeonpyeong that the North had bombarded in November; pledged to
work on intellectual property rights and prevent the new policy of "indigenous
innovation" from freezing out U.S. firms in China; and invited Secretary of Defense
Gates to reopen the military-to-military dialogue through a visit to China.  At the summit
with President Obama, President Hu Jintao highlighted about China’s limits and
challenges at home such as low per-capita income, huge disparities between rich and
poor, badly polluted cities, a social safety net with holes big enough for 1.3 billion people
to slip through, rather than China’s new powers.
65
Now the problem is that although President Hu Jintao stated his desire to reduce
tensions with the US, powerful nationalist forces at home, including military leaders,
could set a limit on his desires. It was certainly worrisome that the PLA test flight of
China's new J-20 stealth fighter took place during Secretary Gates's visit to China and it
became a surprise to China's political leadership. Although President Obama has returned
to the centralist engagement that the succussive US presidents has eventually held, its
long term result remains to be seen.
                                             
65 David E. Sanger, “Super