By MARK LANDLER and SEWELL CHAN
Published: October 25, 2010
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, facing a vexed relationship with China on exchange rates, trade, and security issues, is stiffening its approach toward Beijing, seeking allies to confront a newly assertive power that officials now say has little intention of working with the United States.
In a shift from its assiduous one-on-one courtship of Beijing, the administration is trying to line up coalitions — among China’s next-door neighbors and far-flung trading partners — to present Chinese leaders with a unified front on thorny issues like the currency and its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
The advantages and limitations of this new approach were on display last weekend at a meeting of the world’s largest economies in South Korea. The United States won support for a concrete pledge to reduce trade imbalances, which will put more pressure on China to allow its currency to rise in value.
But Germany, Italy, and Russia balked at an American proposal to place numerical limits on these imbalances, a step that would have further upped the ante on Beijing. That left the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, to make an unscheduled stopover in China on his way home from South Korea to discuss the deepening tensions over exchange rates with a top Chinese finance official.
Administration officials speak of an alarming loss of trust and confidence between China and the United States over the last two years, forcing them to scale back hopes of working with the Chinese on major challenges like climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and a new global economic order.
The latest source of tension is over reports that China is withholding shipments of rare-earth minerals, which the United States uses to make advanced equipment like guided missiles. Administration officials, clearly worried, said they did not know whether Beijing’s motivation was strategic or economic.
“This administration came in with one dominant idea: make China a global partner in facing global challenges,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program atGeorge Washington University. “China failed to step up and play that role. Now, they realize they’re dealing with an increasingly narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist, and powerful country.”
To counter what some officials view as a surge of Chinese triumphalism, the United States is reinvigorating cold-war alliances with Japan and South Korea, and shoring up its presence elsewhere in Asia. This week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit Vietnam for the second time in four months, to attend an East Asian summit meeting likely to be dominated by the China questions.
Next month, Mr. Obama plans to tour four major Asian democracies — Japan, Indonesia, India, and South Korea — while bypassing China. The itinerary is not meant as a snub: Mr. Obama has already been to Beijing once, and his visit to Indonesia is long delayed. But the symbolism is not lost on administration officials.
Jeffrey A. Bader, a key China policy adviser in the White House, said China’s muscle-flexing became especially noticeable after the 2008 economic crisis, in part because Beijing’s faster rebound led to a “widespread judgment that the U.S. was a declining power and that China was a rising power.”
But the administration, he said, was determined “to effectively counteract that impression by renewing American leadership.”
Political factors at home have contributed to the administration’s tougher posture. With the economy sputtering and unemployment high, Beijing has become an all-purpose target. In this Congressional election season, candidates in at least 30 races are bashing China as a threat to American jobs.
At a time of partisan paralysis in Congress, anger over China’s currency has been one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement, culminating in the House’s overwhelming vote in September to threaten China with tariffs on its exports if Beijing did not let its currency,the renminbi, appreciate.
There is a growing sense, even among Republicans, that lobbying China on a bilateral basis has not succeeded; the administration’s refusal to label China a currency manipulator is cited as evidence of fecklessness.
“A decision was made that bilateral talks weren’t moving a major economic issue,” said Representative Sander M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat who as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee guided the currency bill through the House. “Essentially there was a decision to try to move from bilateral to multilateral.”
The trouble is that domestic forces may cause the Chinese to dig in their heels under pressure from these new coalitions. With the Communist Party embarking on a transfer of leadership from President Hu Jintao to his anointed successor, Xi Jinping, the leadership is wary of changes that could hobble China’s growth.
There are also increasingly sharp divisions between China’s civilian leaders and elements of the People’s Liberation Army. Many Chinese military officers are openly hostile toward the United States, convinced that its recent naval exercises in the Yellow Sea amount to a policy of encircling China.
Even the administration’s efforts to collaborate with China on climate change and nonproliferation are viewed with suspicion by some in Beijing. “There is a belief thatPresident Obama’s attempt to make them a partner on global issues is actually a way to hold them back,” said Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who was China adviser in the Clinton administration.
Note:
Is it just me, or could most of Americans informed Obama's administration that China is a "narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist, and powerful country."
Is it just me, or could most Americans enlightened Obama and his Administration that it is not nice to "fool mother nature" or, America's closest allies i.e. Israel, for the sake of wooing nations that are NOT democracies, nor the least bit interested in anything remotely affiliated to a democracy.
Is it just me, or could Americans have educated Obama on the importance of being a trustworthy friend to ALL America's allies.
Could Obama's trip to India have anything to do with "wooing" India, now that China is pushed back into Obama's on- the- job experience, as President? Too bad Obama had not surrounded himself with wiser men and women, to assist him in foreign policy. Oh, and just a hint to Obama: India is no more keen on Islamic civilization/ideology than China! or, more importantly, than Americans!Bee Sting
