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.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017