If You've Lost The NY Times (China Division)

The NY Times has a puzzling "news analysis" story about the US-China relationship.  Is the relationship cooling?  They aren't sure. But some experts think that Team Obama needs to rethink their approach, so the Times dwells on that.  Other experts may think that the Obama Administration is doing a great job, but we don't hear from them.

The main takeaway is that the Times really does seem to have found a new comfort zone in gratuitous Obama-bashing. 

Some highlights:

BEIJING — If anyone ever doubted it, a testy exchange at a Singapore conference last weekend made it clear: Relations between the American and Chinese militaries are in a very deep freeze.

What is genuinely in doubt is whether that is but a burr in the two nations’ broader relationship, or a portent.

So the military leaders are at odds bit the larger relationship may or may not be OK.  On that sand, they build:

But there is a context: an increasing assertiveness in global economic and diplomatic affairs by Chinese leaders. Advocates of a tougher and more nationalistic China have gained influence in the past 6 to 12 months, and their impact is being felt more in both foreign and domestic policies.

To some Western analysts, that suggests that the Obama administration’s fundamental approach toward China — to make China a responsible partner in global affairs by giving Beijing a larger stake in solving international problems — needs retooling.

"Some" analysts?  Has this become a mainstream view, or are we hearing from a few right-wing cranks?

“There has been a real sea change and hardening of attitude in Chinese government thinking about relations with the United States over the past six or eight months,” said David Shambaugh, a leading expert on the Chinese military and the Communist Party at George Washington University. “Under these circumstances, Washington needs to undertake a comprehensive review of its China strategy and policy from top to bottom.”

Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, a Beijing analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the Obama administration’s hopes for cooperation with Beijing “have been more optimistic than current scenarios warrant.”

“China and the U.S. continue to have fundamentally different values, goals and capabilities,” she said, citing China’s reluctance to press for the truth in the sinking of a South Korean ship, an attack that an international investigation determined was the work of North Korea. 

David Shambaugh doesn't seem like a nut in this article from a year ago.  Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt was skeptical of Obama's ambitions with China last November (she thinks they would prefer to free-ride on the North Korean and Iranian nuclear problems), but that is hardly nutty. 

Let's get a big "Who Knows?" from one more expert:

“Many, if not all, officials of the U.S. government believe the current situation is one in which the military has the bit in its mouth and is taking the lead on this issue,” said Michael Swaine, a China scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In their assessment, Mr. Swaine said, “the Communist Party and the foreign affairs apparatus is not terribly happy about it, but is going along with it.”

The truth is that nobody knows. Policy toward the United States — especially military policy — is concocted in a black box at the government’s highest levels, Mr. Swaine and others said.

Glad we cleared this up.  This article showed me more about the Times-Obama relationship than the US-China one.

Comments

[Who lost China?]

The Middle Empire.
=========

[The New York Times : We're Still Big, It's the News that Got Small]

Advocates of a tougher and more nationalistic China have gained influence in the past 6 to 12 months

-and that's just on our editorial pages!

[The Obama Administration : We're Still Small, It's the Nation's Problems that Got Big]

China and the U.S. continue to have fundamentally different values, goals and capabilities

-We're working on it.

[LouP]

Who the heck knows what's going on in China, and - for that matter - in our own Obama administation? I just know the following quote from that article makes absolutely no sense at all:

"In his speech, Mr. Gates was even more blunt. Military ties between the nations are “held hostage” by the Taiwan issue, he said, even though American arms sales to Taiwan “have been a reality for decades.” China cannot change that reality, he said — and in any case, Washington does not support Taiwan’s independence from the mainland."

We don't support Taiwan's independence, but we're going to sell them arms anyway, and there's nothing that China can do about it... Huh???? Did the Times get it wrong? Did Gates misspeak? What?

Methinks that something is badly garbled here - between Obama's Hope and Change naivety, and the Times' competency and agenda.

[Neo]

"Some" analysts?

I think that includes the Soggy Bottom Boys

[matt]

when a drunk borrows $10 trillion from oneself and keeps on sneaking out the back door to buy a couple more cases of Old Overholt on one's dime one would seem to get upset, wouldn't one?

The Foxconn pay raise conundrum has added an additional wrinkle to the picture as well. They announced their intention to pass along that 30% pay raise to all 350,000 of their assembly line workers to their end users, including Dell and Apple.

The world is changing at fundamental levels these clowns have yet to understand, and none of it bodes well for the Republic.

[matt]

lou;

what I believe Mr. Gates is saying is that it's time to sell out Taiwan as well......They are already "owned" by China through the massive mainland investments made by Taiwanese companies.

[Dominoes, chess, checkers, basketball, is there no game he can play?]

Formosa goes under the bus next after Israel. South Korea, then Japan.
=================

[BobS]

China, Iran, Turkey and the DNC's agenda are all one and the same. Power. Stop asking questions. The DNC will throw the US under the bus to keep Nancy Pelosi and unions in charge. If it takes going to bed with any of these three to do it, the DNC will.

[tollhouse]

Gates is just repeating what has been official government policy for a few decades. A fiction of course, but a convenient one, even if it is a contradiction.

[not_bubaroooni]

So in tomorrow's NY Times there will be a brilliant followup to this article where they will ask 'Who lost China?'.

I'll wager real money the answer will be one of those Bush guys.

[daddy]

Anybody remember what Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for?

[Rob Crawford]

Anybody remember what Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for?

Playing the role of Chamberlain in a reprise of history's biggest show.

[JM Hanes]

Trust the New York Times to come late to the party!

“There has been a real sea change and hardening of attitude in Chinese government thinking about relations with the United States over the past six or eight months,”

Oddly enough, the "or eight" part of the timeline coincides with the little trade war Obama cooked up as an appetizer for that November dinner with Hu Jintao.

By the embarrassments of December, anyone with half a brain should have figured out that Obama needed to retool his China policy, not to mention making time for some preemptive seminars on Brazil! Can we say BRIC? For pure fecklessness, though, it's hard to beat this:

“Many, if not all, officials of the U.S. government believe the current situation is one in which the military has the bit in its mouth and is taking the lead on this issue,” said Michael Swaine, a China scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In their assessment, Mr. Swaine said, “the Communist Party and the foreign affairs apparatus is not terribly happy about it, but is going along with it.”

I can just imagine all the wringing of communist hands! Apparently those military types were already cracking the whip, oh, say around six months ago in January:

A furious China said on Saturday it was suspending military exchanges with the United States protesting against Washington’s move to sell $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.

Whether Gates, whom I respect well enough, is a "great statesman" is debatable. The Chinese genius for negotiation is not; nor is there anything puzzling in their reaction to a patronizing foreign policy formulation which seeks (emphasis mine) "to make China a responsible partner in global affairs by giving Beijing a larger stake in solving international problems." Obama, and apparently the NYTimes China desk, have yet to realize that the U.S. President is the global junior partner now. Alas. The new Teddy Roosevelt talks a big schtick and eats umble pie.

[squaredance]

Gstes hss turned out to be a profound disappointment. One hoped when he took his that that perhaps he was trying to stand in the breach and save what he could.

He has turned out to e be a sort of internal, bureaucratic quisling. He behaves as the worst sort of establishment Democrat, and frankly his the direction of the DOD under his tenure at the DOD borders on treason.

It is not a question of when Obama and crew will betray us to the Chinese, but rather how far as the betrayal advanced to date.

When you hear buffoons like Krugman suggest that "we should be ore like China", you know that he heard such things while sitting on the periphery of serious internal discussion in the Democrats' inner circles.

Obama, the DNC and their supporters are much more comfortable with the Chinese vision of Mankind than they are with traditional and normative morality.

We have every reason to fear that the horses have already left the barn.

[LouP]

Returning to the question that TM dangled in front of us: Just what is the NYT's agenda here? And there is sure to be an agenda.

Since they describe the change in US-China relations to have occurred in the "last 6 to 12 months" it doesn't seem to be about Bush. I can't see how it can be spun into an Anti-Israel/Pro-Palestine agenda, nor can I see how it can help any of the other familiar NYT agenda items, e.g., repeal of DADT. Etc., etc.

There does seem to be one thread running through it however: Gates. Is this an initial hit-piece on Gates in an attempt to get him replaced?

[OZ Bourne]

Crazy, but that's how it goes.
Millions of people living as foes......
Maybe it's not too late

Ozzy Osbourne 87

[srp]

Let's not make the Chinese-are-ten-feet-tall mistake (admittedly not one of the usual stereotypes, but you get the idea). The government is surely hoping if not planning to supplant us as the most important nation, but they are also hanging for dear life to the bucking bronco of their country. Their own modernization/development/rent-extraction program is the spur in the horse's hide.

A colleague born in China who has family there told me that the current real estate bubble is sucking in the life savings of millions of hard-working people. He pointed out that people in China have much shorter time horizons for judging investments because they fundamentally don't believe that regime stability can be taken for granted. Get-rich-quick is the order of the day. Any payoff promised more than ten or fifteen years hence is ignored, so fundamental analysis of NPVs and rent vs. own ratios is out while momentum chasing, bubbles, and the greater fool theory is in. Interesting claims at the least.

[MayBee]

It appears to me China is acting the way it has long acted and the Obama administration is attempting to make it look like a sea change.

Rather than admit Obama's approach has been feckless from the beginning(as JMH so deftly points out)and therefore must be changed, the administration is acting as if China's *new* behavior toward us is forcing us to change.

[narciso]

The PLA and the Siloviki who run our two respective former competitors, understand economics and brute force, two areas of focus this administration is clueless on

[bunkerbuster]

Tom acknowledges: ``the Times really does seem to have found a new comfort zone in gratuitous Obama-bashing.''

I admire the honesty, but where are the confessions that the wingut worldview -- based in no small part on the myth that the media are controlled by Obama -- has been proven wrong yet again???

[On roll the deep, dark, c's, across the Sands of Dee.]

Yep, China, Capital, and Climate.
=================

[narciso]

I see another SNL sketch with the Chinese interpreter, and it won't go nearly as well
as the last one

[JM Hanes]

Precisely, MayBee. They also get themselves and the Prez off the hook when it comes to proposing any actual alternatives by suggesting that even the experts are baffled by China's new muscularity. Not that they wasted any pixels describing current "policy," either.

I'm not as convinced as some that the Times' reporters -- among others -- are universally agenda driven, even though the environment is demonstrably liberal. I get the distinct feeling that a lot of today's "journalists" are simply too young and inexperienced to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[narciso]

Well they only think they do, in the end, just
like you have to 'plug the hole' you still have to deal with China, and more policy stances then Sybil aren't going to cut it

[bunkerbuster]

Journalists follow the polls. When a politician is up, they write up about him, when he's down, they write down about him.
That's the nature of the beast.
Conservatives think the media are biased because they compare straight news reporting to the narrow, highly ideological viewpoints of talkradio and Fox News commentators. Indeed, compared to THAT, the news media are liberal. But compared to the average American, the news media's frame of reference is kept dead center. That's why when Obama's hugely popular, the media coverage is hugely positive. When he's losing popularity, he correspondingly loses positive coverage. That's how the mainstream media stays "mainstream."

[narciso]

"Strategic ambiguity" was I believe what they tagged it as in the Clinton administration, but one of the Chinese interlocutors put it
plainly to our 'good friend' Charles Freeman, you're not going to risk an American city for
Taiwan

[Pofarmer]

When a politician is up, they write up about him, when he's down, they write down about him.

Really? Palin had a favorability rating of 86% when she took the VP nomination.

[narciso]

Therein lies the tale, Po, none of her accomplishment really got anything close to due recognition after Aug 29th, and they had to invent ones for Obama, besides channelling
CAC money to his pals like Ayera and co,

[Ignatz]

--But compared to the average American, the news media's frame of reference is kept dead center.--

You can't possibly believe the rot you write.

[Evil Witch Doctors.]

You can't explain him, Iggy, without understanding that he does believe it. Just like with the climate business, the left has plain lost its mind. It's also an 'extraordinary popular delusion and madness of the crowd'.

Sadly, I'm beginning to think the climate business is just a special case of the more general problem. Their political ideology is proven to worsen the human condition in direct opposite to their dreams. What is the definition of insanity, doing the same failed thing over and over again?

Why must this particular piece of the human imagination require repeated sacrifices to the Gods of Governance, who are clearly disapproving of the sacrifices.
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