For several years, China has repeatedly accused the US of “arrogance.” Now some Americans have taken to asserting the same about China.
There is a difference, however. Chinese allegations are publicly orchestrated via spokesmen for the government, the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army and government-controlled press and television news. Withering Chinese criticism has been aimed at US President Barack Obama’s meeting last week with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, at the White House.
American suggestions that the Chinese have become arrogant come from “China hands” who specialize in the study of China and they are assessments made privately so as not to arouse more Chinese ire. In public, allegations of Chinese arrogance come from conservatives who profess to see a Chinese threat to the US.
These transpacific rhetorical barrages reflect an underlying distrust between the US and China that affects their political, economic and military relations.
An upbeat glimmer of hope — the US aircraft carrier Nimitz and four other warships arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday to resume military exchanges. The Chinese have often suspended such exchanges to express their political displeasure with the US.
That was the case last month when the Obama administration announced that the US would sell US$6.4 billion in arms to Taiwan. The Chinese erupted in anger, with the China Daily contending: “China’s response, no matter how vehement, is justified.”
“Washington’s arrogance also reflects the stark reality of how a nation’s interests could be trampled upon by another,” said the English-language paper, published to reach the foreign community in China.
Earlier, a Chinese contributor to the China Daily called Obama’s plan to meet with the Dalai Lama “pathetic, deplorable” and evidence of a “cold war mentality” stemming from “ideology-driven politicians and China bashers.”
The contributor avoided the word “arrogance,” but called it “the audacity of shame.”
In the US, China watchers quietly caution that the Chinese have become arrogant because their economy has been surging.
US military officers note that their Chinese counterparts have become self-confident to the point of arrogance because they have experienced a decade of double-digit increases in military spending and have acquired new planes, warships, missiles and high-tech equipment.
The US fear is that this arrogance might cause the Chinese to miscalculate. Leaders of the Pacific Command from Admiral Joseph Prueher, who dealt with the Chinese when they fired missiles at Taiwan in 1996, to Admiral Robert Willard, who took command in October, have cautioned the Chinese not to miscalculate.
Some China hands assert that the Chinese have outmaneuvered the US.
As one put it: “They are shaping us more than we are shaping them.”
They contend that the US is on the defensive, continually attempting to placate the Chinese, as seen in the scripted meeting between Obama and the Dalai Lama.
Obama received the Tibetan leader in the Map Room, not the Oval Office. No reporters or photographers were admitted. Only an official picture was published. There was no joint press conference after the meeting and no briefing on the conversation.
A White House statement said Obama expressed support for “the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China.”
However, the statement ended on a bland, deferential note.
“The President and the Dalai Lama agreed on the importance of a positive and cooperative relationship between the United States and China,” it said.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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