China's growing arrogance

Posted By Blake Hounshell Saturday, January 30, 2010 - 11:25 AM Share

Remember how I said 2010 would be a rough year for U.S.-China relations?

The first shoe to drop was Google's announcement that the privacy of Chinese human rights activists using its email software had been violated, and that cyberattacks on its servers had been traced to within China.

Now, China is expressing furious anger over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan -- threatening unprecedented actions in response, including sanctions on U.S. companies, and hinting darkly of a broader unwillingness to cooperate with American diplomatic priorities (read: North Korea and Iran). Military-to-military cooperation between the U.S. and China now seems to be off the table, and deputies-level talks will be suspended.

Truth be told, China hadn't been and probably wouldn't be super helpful on Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs, but the direction the relationship is taking is worrying. In February, President Obama is supposed to meet with the Dalai Lama, and that is sure to provoke further ire in Beijing.

Obama administration officials had been expecting some blowback from the arms sales, and are downplaying China's reaction, but I wonder if even they see Beijing as upping the ante. Is this going to be the usual loud, public show of anger, followed by a return to business as usual? Or is China feeling its strength and looking to demonstrate that it can force the mighty United States to change course?

I detect a bit of arrogance in Beijing right now. Most recently, Colum Lynch reports, China sent a third or fourth-tier diplomat to U.N. discussions over Iran's nuclear program. At the climate talks in Copenhagen in December, not only did China seem to renege on promises it had made earlier, but Premier Wen Jiabao famously snubbed other top world powers by sending his deputy to a high-level meeting (I'm told by one participant that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was especially angry about the slight). This kind of thing may not make headlines, but it shapes other countries' willingness to make concessions and accomodate China's interests at the margins.

China is going to learn sooner or later that the famous line from Spider Man -- "with great power comes great responsibility" -- applies to real-world superpowers as much as it does to fictional superheroes. Let's just hope it's sooner.

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BLUE13326

5:31 PM ET

January 30, 2010

Well, from the Chinese

Well, from the Chinese perspective (and isn't the whole leftist mantra that in our own arrogance we have to learn to see things from others' perspective?), they are expected to keep buying our debt while we sell billions of dollars of arms to a province they have historical claims on?

MICHAEL JOHN

1:43 AM ET

January 31, 2010

American Interest

Well, to the US, it is business as usual because we have been selling these weapons to Taiwan ever since we agreed to gradually reduce the weapon sales in the 1970's. However, since China has basically not protested so strongly, why not? Yeah, it would set back some dialog agenda, but so what? We would be patient. For Obama, since nothing seems to be going in the right direction, at least provoking China will not be perceived as weak or problematic for his domestic audience. Hence the decision. Nothing unusual.

For China, things are a little different this time around. For one, China pinned high hope on Mr. Ma of Taiwan for closer ties, but this weapon sale ruined the party. Another thing is that China considers itself helping the US economically by keeping buying our treasure bills, and apparently this goodwill wasn't received as such by the US side (we reckoned China keeps buying our debt out of its own self-interests).

Is China more assertive (or arrogant as the title suggests) on international stage? Oh yeah, but I guess it is because we asked it to be, didn't we? You can't expect a major power to be "more responsible" by simply following what we tell them to, right? They have their own national interests and security concerns, which are more often than not different from ours, and so this kind of response is nothing surprising.

TRANSOM

4:00 PM ET

January 31, 2010

China's growing arrogance

Bellicosity, bullying, intimidation--how is this so different from past Chinese behavior? But let's hope the U.S. never finds itself in the position where a Chinese leader is demanding: "Kneel before Zod, son of Jor-El!"

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