Joseph A. Bosco: What Obama should tell China's President Hu: No, you can't
[Joseph A. Bosco served in the office of the secretary of defense as China country desk officer and previously taught graduate seminars on China-US relations at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is now a national security consultant.]
It is time for an honest reckoning with China. That’s what President Obama should tell President Hu Jintao when he visits the US next week.
For 30 years, far from “containing” China, the United States and the West have supported its economic and military development and granted it diplomatic respectability. But Beijing has failed to reciprocate by meeting international norms and behaving like a responsible stakeholder.
Yet we continue to give China the benefit of the doubt as it offers a litany of excuses: It needs more time. It has a huge population. It is a Confucian society. It suffers from a history of Western humiliation. The Chinese people care more about prosperity than political or religious freedoms.
Many American experts, in and out of government, buy into this catalogue of Chinese complaints and rationalizations. With that assured buffer, Beijing stays relentlessly on its course, using the international order when it benefits China, ignoring or actively undermining what it finds inconvenient....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
It is time for an honest reckoning with China. That’s what President Obama should tell President Hu Jintao when he visits the US next week.
For 30 years, far from “containing” China, the United States and the West have supported its economic and military development and granted it diplomatic respectability. But Beijing has failed to reciprocate by meeting international norms and behaving like a responsible stakeholder.
Yet we continue to give China the benefit of the doubt as it offers a litany of excuses: It needs more time. It has a huge population. It is a Confucian society. It suffers from a history of Western humiliation. The Chinese people care more about prosperity than political or religious freedoms.
Many American experts, in and out of government, buy into this catalogue of Chinese complaints and rationalizations. With that assured buffer, Beijing stays relentlessly on its course, using the international order when it benefits China, ignoring or actively undermining what it finds inconvenient....