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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Playing China

I have this feeling that the first media reaction at China's retaliations for the Taiwan arms sales will be some kind of breathless, "shock"y-doomseeing (especially among the supposedly super tough Republicans who oppose Obama,) but I'm seeing this in a little larger context.

Let's go back a about a month to the global climate meeting where the Chinese very intentionally engineered a personal and globally visible failure for Barack Obama. As I wrote then, the modern Chinese historically test new American presidents. (Remember the US electronic spy plane the Chinese forced down and reverse engineered in Bush's first year?)

So, see the Obama provocations, like the Google/internet freedom stuff and the Taiwan arms sale, as part of a calculated US response. This US China "tension" is kinda necessary to find a good footing for the next seven or so years.

3 Comments:

  • The arms sales are good for the people who make the stuff. I'm not sure it goes much further than that.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:45 AM  

  • Normally they do lots of littler deals that don't make waves.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 10:38 AM  

  • Good point. This does seem designed to send some kind of message. Hopefully somebody knows what it is.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:02 AM  

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