Are we nearing the moment when the president of the United States will no longer take the risk of speaking openly about defending democracy in Taiwan, human rights in China, the Dalai Lama and Tibet, or the exchange rate of the yuan?
According to Wang Wen, the international forum editor of China’s state-run Global Times, the ‘contradiction’ of an America that needs China’s help but which criticizes Beijing over a wide variety of touchy issues will soon be impossible to maintain.
For China’s Global Times, Wang Wen writes in part:
President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama has once again exposed the deep contradictions of U.S. foreign policy toward China: both the need to move forward with relations with China, but also the desire to contain or inhibit China’s development. Experience tells us that whatever changes occur in Sino-American relations, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to hold idealistic fantasies about Washington.
As long as Chinese power maintains an upward trend, problems like relations across the Taiwan Strait, the Dalai Lama and Tibet, human rights, the exchange rate of the yuan, climate change, and trade issues – will become increasingly paradoxical.
While Sino-American relations have continued to move forward despite these disputes, the disputes themselves aren’t immutable and will shift based on the strength of the two parties. If the United States can’t contain China’s development, as it has failed to do for the last three decades, this contradictory U.S. policy toward China will become ever more dysfunctional. The growing number of practical problems will force Washington to make a choice.
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