ABSTRACT
During his first visit to China in November 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged the growing importance of China to the United States and the global economy. Instead of harping on China’s protectionism and human rights violations, he emphasized the need to gain its cooperation in putting pressure on Iran and North Korea over nuclear issues, reducing climate change, and letting its currency appreciate to reduce its massive trade surplus with the United States. However, two years later, Obama angered Beijing when he announced plans to station 2,500 Marines permanently in Darwin, Australia as part of a policy to bolster the U.S. military presence in Asia. In the thick of campaigning for re-election in 2012, he also repeatedly criticized China’s unfair trade practices. The president’s seemingly contradictory approaches to China remind us that China’s rapid growth simultaneously benefits and challenges the world’s remaining superpower. Now the second largest economy and the biggest producer in the world of steel, coal, textiles, PCs, TVs, and cell phones, China helps U.S. consumers while it hurts many U.S. workers. Its rising military power potentially threatens U.S. allies in the Pacific. Whether or not Beijing leans more toward cooperation or confrontation in the future, we can be confident that the post-Cold War era of U.S. unilateralism and hegemony is rapidly ending.
