For the Council on Foreign Relations blog, Elizabeth Economy writes that the recent uproar over tensions between the U.S. and China over Tibet, Taiwan, and a host of other issues, is overblown:
There is nothing new here. We are merely witnessing the reality of the U.S.-China relationship, which is marked by almost no trust, a weak foundation of real cooperation, and a lack of shared values and commitment to true compromise. China and the United States have never achieved full agreement on how to approach climate change; we have regular disputes over Taiwan arms sales and the Dalai Lama; and we have never had a truly common approach to Iran. The only “new” issue on the table is the Chinese cyberhacking of Google, a number of major American companies and think tanks, and Chinese dissidents…and even that is probably not all that new. We just didn’t know about it.
