Healthy China-US ties are good for everyone

One wonders what all the fuss is all about. On the one hand, the Chinese and Americans said they were partners. But when one appeared to be making some headway, regaining some lost political capital because of the work of the previous administration, the other gets into a hissy fit.
There are no if’s and but’s about it. The Chinese are furious at US President Barack Obama’s new Asia policy. Beijing sees Obama’s gains as an attempt to contain China.
The English-language China Daily in its lead editorial has accused Washington of “scare-mongering” over the perceived threat of China’s rise. It stated that “East Asia was not a US playground.”
A similar line was echoed in the Jiefang Daily, a Chinese-language version of the official Xinhua news agency, which said: “The aim of America’s strategic move east is in fact to pin down and contain China and counterbalance China’s development.”
At a summit of East Asian countries in Bali, Obama tactically sided with Asean members on their territorial disputes with China by raising the issue at the forum knowing that Beijing preferred to deal with the matter bilaterally. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei all have territorial disputes with Beijing.
With or without the US, pressure will continue to mount as Asean members are pushing for a legally binding code of conduct for the South China Sea, where there are many overlapping claims.
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao was not pleased at being put on the spot. But, he should have seen it coming.
In Australia, Obama announced plans to locate 2,500 Marines in Darwin by 2016. China fears that these troops could be used to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Another issue that rubbed Beijing the wrong way was the US-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership. China is likely to be excluded because of strict environmental and labour standards. ‘Superpower’ comes with super responsibilities, so the saying goes. If Beijing wants to be taken serious in the world forum in every respect of international relations, it has to live up to such responsibilities.
The US bashing has not been confined to security and international relations realms but also economic matters as well. Xinhua warned in a commentary that Beijing “has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets.”
This came after the decision by Standard & Poor’s rating agency to downgrade the United States’ credit rating a notch from AAA on last Friday. But drastic action by Beijing is unlikely given the fact that China is holding more than US$1.1 trillion in US treasuries.
The rhetoric reflects the complexities in China-US rivalry. In spite of the fact that the two countries are bound together by its US$457 billion in total two-way trade last year, there are, nonetheless, points for concerns for all.
Indeed, when two superpowers collides, countries all over the world get nervous. As US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns recently said, “no single relationship is likely to matter more to either [America or China] in the decades ahead, or to the future of international order.”
The two countries have come a long way since President Richard Nixon’s famous visit to China in 1972. Needless to say, a healthy US-China relationship is good for all of us. Because, if one gets sick, we all catch a cold. Imagine if both of them sick and at each other’s throats?!