The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

himself as the “first Pacific President.” 132 Through
these high-sound-bite outreaches, the Obama administration
has put forward a strategy toward Asia:
strengthen and reinvigorate old alliances, make new
friends, and support multilateral institutions in this
region. 133
Chinese watch the Obama team’s moves with
much suspicion. They dismiss the above as pretext for
the United States to reposition itself in the Western Pacific.
They argue that the United States has never left
the Asia-Pacific, even though it has been busy fighting
wars elsewhere; and this stormy repositioning is only
an attempt to counterbalance China’s expanding power.
134 Thus instead of welcoming the “return” of the
United States to Asia, China was preparing for new
tension in the two nations’ relations. 135 Unfortunately,
it did not take them long to see a downturn this way.
Indeed, an eventful 2010 unfolded in a series of confrontations
between the United States and China that
touched upon almost all the sensitive issues between
the two nations.
The year 2010 started with President Obama’s
authorization of $6.4 billion worth of arms sales to
Taiwan (on January 29) and a meeting with the Dalai
Lama at the White House (on February 17). Both, according
to the Chinese, were acts stepping on China’s
core interests and against repeated Chinese protests.
They set off a firestorm in Beijing. The Chinese government
summoned the U.S. Ambassador and the
Defense Attaché to receive China’s protest, and informed
them that high-level military exchanges with
the United States were to be suspended and those U.S.
corporations that make arms for Taiwan would be
sanctioned.
In the following month (March), U.S. Deputy Secretary
of State James Steinberg and Senior Director for
138