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| US President Barack Obama (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Shannon Tiezzi
Obama’s annual address contained a world view that Beijing will find inherently problematic.
Ah, the State of the Union address – that special time each year when analysts spend hours and hours pouring over a speech that will likely have little to no relationship to actual government policy. Fortunately, I can beg off from most of that tedium by virtue of working for an international affairs magazine. In fact, as of yesterday evening I had no plans to write about the speech at all – unless, of course, Obama said something particularly interesting or relevant to U.S.-China relations. And so he did, and here we are.
The passage in question reads as follows:
But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules. We should level the playing field. That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free, but are also fair. It’s the right thing to do.
There’s a lot going on here that, unfortunately, will reinforce some of the darker suspicions among Chinese officials. Let’s unpack this paragraph, shall we?
Read the full story at The Diplomat